pwcc

[AustinMike]

JHS5120 - I like your solution. Keep head buried in sand, claim it can't be fixed, and move on. With that attitude, I guess I can safely assume that you don't bother to ever lock your home or car doors. After all, burglaries happen and you can't stop them, right? So why bother to lock or even close your doors?

Leon had a great solution ... don't allow anyone with 2 or more bid retractions to bid on the auctions. You didn't address that.

How about, don't let anyone with an ebay account created when the card was consigned, or after, bid on the card without contacting the consignment house? That would prevent the consignor from creating a new account simply to bid on his card.

And I'm sure there are other ways to combat the problem other than throwing one's hands in the air and claiming it can't be done.

[jhs5120]

Originally Posted by AustinMike

Leon had a great solution ... don't allow anyone with 2 or more bid retractions to bid on the auctions. You didn't address that.

I did address it. It would take approximately 96 hours to look at the amount of bid retractions for every bidder on every auction (with a threshold above $250). Which is only covering 20% of PWCC's auction. I think we can both agree that isn't a solution.

Originally Posted by AustinMike

How about, don't let anyone with an ebay account created when the card was consigned, or after, bid on the card without contacting the consignment house? That would prevent the consignor from creating a new account simply to bid on his card.

It would take even longer to look up every account creation date and then cross-reference that to when the consignment was received and that would end up being a purely speculative process. Brent might as well quit auctioning items and just work full time trying to nab shillers.

Originally Posted by AustinMike

I'm sure there are other ways to combat the problem other than throwing one's hands in the air and claiming it can't be done.

I agree.

Some of the greatest minds in the hobby frequent this board, I am genuinly interested in hearing a viable solution to the problem.

If we're going to sit at our computers and bash a small business owner, how about we put in a little bit of thought and figure out a solution.

[calvindog]

Jason, why can't Brent tell us his thoughts on these issues instead of you? Doesn't he have more invested in concerns about the fraud that might be occurring in his auctions than you do?

And why are we responsible for cleaning up his auctions? I wasn't aware of that responsibility. I thought our responsibility started and ended with the rules of his auction.

[nolemmings]

If it takes 96 man-hours to check for retracting bidders, then hire help to do just that. As the problem is attacked it should start to get under control, with bid retractors blocked. As for new accounts being prohibited as potential shills, you can simply deny bidders with less than 5 or 10 feedback from bidding unless they get approval–no need to check account creation dates.

And no one said you have to run 12,000 auctions at a time. Turning away consignors (or postponing their orders) may seem like anathema, but the excuse of “I’m making too much money to care how I make it” is a non-starter with me. SHOW SOME INITIATIVE.

[jhs5120]

Originally Posted by calvindog

Jason, why can't Brent tell us his thoughts on these issues instead of you?

I'm not the person to ask that question to.

Originally Posted by calvindog

Doesn't he have more invested in concerns about the fraud that might be occurring in his auctions than you do?

Yes, I would love to hear his take on the whole issue.

Originally Posted by calvindog

And why are we responsible for cleaning up his auctions? I wasn't aware of that responsibility.

If a person comes onto a public forum and "outs" the owner of an auction house for fraudulent activity that is beyond his control, he certainly has the responsibility to offer a solution.

Originally Posted by calvindog

I thought our responsibility started and ended with the rules of his auction.

The rules of Brents auction explicitly forbids the act of shill bidding. If it is OUR responsibility to adhere to these rules then how can we blame Brent for the people who do not listen?

Per PWCC:

The sportscard hobby hinges on the honesty and integrity of the seller. Too often we hear of fraud and other manipulation that serves to undermine the integrity of our hobby. Bidders deserve better, where bidding is 100% legitimate and uninfluenced by manipulations such as fraudulent (shill) bidding by the auction house, consignors, friends of consignors, friends of the auction house, or anyone else who participates insincerely with the sole intention of manipulating the sale price. We do NOT permit shill bidding of any kind and actively police our auctions to prevent such acts from occurring. If we learn that a bidder is questionable, we take action in the form of canceling the bid and blocking a bidder from participating in future auctions.

To preserve the integrity of the bidding process, we believe that eBay is the best forum to host auctions due to the privacy of the eBay platform. Unlike proprietary auction software, eBay’s platform is equally transparent to both the buyer and the seller. We don’t know the value of a bidder’s max bid, nor do our consignors, or anyone else. We've spent the last 15 years on eBay (since 1998) working to garner the trust of collectors and the hobby at large. Rest assured that you can trust our service and can participate in our auctions with the confidence that integrity is our #1 priority.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Doug Allen had a Code of Conduct too. See indictment.

[tschock]

Originally Posted by jhs5120

The rules of Brents auction explicitly forbids the act of shill bidding. If it is OUR responsibility to adhere to these rules then how can we blame Brent for the people who do not listen?

Per PWCC:

The sportscard hobby hinges on the honesty and integrity of the seller. Too often we hear of fraud and other manipulation that serves to undermine the integrity of our hobby. Bidders deserve better, where bidding is 100% legitimate and uninfluenced by manipulations such as fraudulent (shill) bidding by the auction house, consignors, friends of consignors, friends of the auction house, or anyone else who participates insincerely with the sole intention of manipulating the sale price. We do NOT permit shill bidding of any kind and actively police our auctions to prevent such acts from occurring. If we learn that a bidder is questionable, we take action in the form of canceling the bid and blocking a bidder from participating in future auctions.

To preserve the integrity of the bidding process, we believe that eBay is the best forum to host auctions due to the privacy of the eBay platform. Unlike proprietary auction software, eBay’s platform is equally transparent to both the buyer and the seller. We don’t know the value of a bidder’s max bid, nor do our consignors, or anyone else. We've spent the last 15 years on eBay (since 1998) working to garner the trust of collectors and the hobby at large. Rest assured that you can trust our service and can participate in our auctions with the confidence that integrity is our #1 priority.

Respectfully, I have to question... "Where have you been?" What you are posting here simply is making Peter and Jeff's point (among others) for them.

This HAS been brought forward in the past and it goes UNANSWERED. It has been brought up again explicitly because Brent has posted to the forum. Peter simply was asking for Brent's response to this.

Either they are doing what they say they are doing (see bold and highlighted) or they are not.

[Peter_Spaeth]

FYI it took me about three minutes to find five (or maybe it was more) suspicious bidders who should be investigated. The stats people throw up in an effort to make this seem more overwhelming than putting a man on the moon don't impress me much.

[glchen]

I agree, I think Brent is in a bad spot because of volume. (Same with other large ebay consignors like Probstein.) However, I do think there are some solutions.

The most obvious would be if ebay would actually get off their butt and help out here. First, ebay can make the bidding id's public. Then everyone can see the actual bidding id's. Next, beside the bidding id in the bidding history, ebay can place the location (City/State) of the bidder. Therefore, if a bidder create fake id's, you can see it b/c of the location of the bidder. However, how about those bidders who fake their location? You can require that the location be mapped to a confirmed shipping address from paypal. In addition, ebay can require that all bidders have paypal accounts. (or if ebay does not, PWCC can in their auctions require that all bidders have valid paypal accounts.) In their paypal accounts, ebay/paypal can require that all accounts have confirmed bank accounts linked to them. This way, it won't be as easy for bidders to create fake accounts, and ebay/paypal can make sure that the account name on the bank account matches the account name on the ebay account along w/ the location. This way there would be more transparency for potential bidders to see what's going on in the bidding history for an auction, and ebay would be able to catch shill bidding much easier. Even if someone is having a friend bid for them, it would be much more difficult if they're near the same location. Obviously, there would still be loopholes if the friend or dealer friend is in a different state.

Another thing that ebay can add is as part of the Buyer Requirements, add a requirement for bidding retractions where if a buyer has a certain number of retractions in the last year, prevent them from bidding in the auction. Then sellers can use this auction to help prevent shilling.

Everything I mentioned is pretty much for ebay. Obviously with so many auctions, it's tough for PWCC to police every one of them. However, perhaps they could participate in some of the threads more openly, and post the actual bidding history of auctions when asked. Basically if certain auctions were questioned, they could investigate those auctions openly as needed, which would help ensure the public that no funny business were going on.

[Leon]

The part of the solution I was talking about takes about 3 seconds. Check someone's bid history, if more than 2 retractions a year, ban them. I don't give a rat's ass where they did the retractions. I am all inclusive of any ebay auction. That is a workable partial solution.

If we found a cure for breast cancer would we take it now or wait until all cancer is curable?

[calvindog]

Time spent by potential victims of fraud in PWCC auctions discussing solutions to fraud = much

Time spent by owner of PWCC auctions discussing solutions to fraud = 0

[markf31]

Originally Posted by jhs5120

The rules of Brents auction explicitly forbids the act of shill bidding. If it is OUR responsibility to adhere to these rules then how can we blame Brent for the people who do not listen?

Per PWCC:

The sportscard hobby hinges on the honesty and integrity of the seller. Too often we hear of fraud and other manipulation that serves to undermine the integrity of our hobby. Bidders deserve better, where bidding is 100% legitimate and uninfluenced by manipulations such as fraudulent (shill) bidding by the auction house, consignors, friends of consignors, friends of the auction house, or anyone else who participates insincerely with the sole intention of manipulating the sale price. We do NOT permit shill bidding of any kind and actively police our auctions to prevent such acts from occurring. If we learn that a bidder is questionable, we take action in the form of canceling the bid and blocking a bidder from participating in future auctions.

To preserve the integrity of the bidding process, we believe that eBay is the best forum to host auctions due to the privacy of the eBay platform. Unlike proprietary auction software, eBay’s platform is equally transparent to both the buyer and the seller. We don’t know the value of a bidder’s max bid, nor do our consignors, or anyone else. We've spent the last 15 years on eBay (since 1998) working to garner the trust of collectors and the hobby at large. Rest assured that you can trust our service and can participate in our auctions with the confidence that integrity is our #1 priority.

When an Ebay user agrees to these terms by placing a bid, guess what... Brent automatically enters into the same agreement to uphold his end of those same auction rules which clearly and explicitly state:
We do NOT permit shill bidding of any kind and actively police our auctions to prevent such acts from occurring.

If Brent has too many listing to (I'm quoting from his own rules) "actively police" all of those listings then he is in violation of his own auction rules! And if having too many items listed at one time prevents him from following through with his own rules then that is his fault, he has failed his responsibility and he is in violation of his own auction rules and this is completely unacceptable.

[steve B]

As a technical issue any seller who does large volume is in a very bad spot.

As JHS said, it's a lot of hours if you do even a basic search for retractions manually. 96 hours is more than two full weeks of labor just to check something basic. Or at $7 an hour $672. Maybe there's enough in the sellers cut to support that, maybe not. Plus those three full time people will need computers to work with.

And it's fairly easy to beat. Just have multiple accounts, one gets banned, but finds the max bids (But not snipes) Another snipes and that's the shill.

Oh yeah, if it takes 96 hours to check bid history, how long will it take to then cancel bids and ban sellers? Figure at least as long. So double your labor cost.

And that still won't really fix it.
say a bidder with 5 retractions bids on 10 items inside the last few seconds and wins them all.
Sure, you can cancel the sale for not following the auction rules and make second chance offers. But that looks fishy as well doesn't it? (Of course it does, we've all discussed it before)


So the solution needs to be a computerized solution.
I don't think Ebay has a feature to proactively block based on retractions.
So whoever wants to do it will have to come up with their own software.
I believe Ebay can be accessed automatically for the info.
That just leaves writing that program, and making adjustments whenever Ebay decides to make a change behind the scenes.

Have you seen what a really good programmer costs?

Ok, now do the math and figure it out from a purely business perspective. Purely business. Will those things add enough to the bottom line to even cover costs? Maybe it will. Maybe more people would bid or would bid more if they knew almost for sure they wouldn't be shilled.
But you need a lot of sales to cover that. If the consignment fee is 20% you need an extra 3300 a week ( 174720 a year plus since I haven't figured fica etc into labor costs)at the absolute minimum. If you're talking about a computer programmer it's more like 300000 to cover a cheap one.(figuring 60K/year, not unusual for a fresh college grad in programming Good experienced ones cost more, much more but may be faster)

Now wait for it......
A month in you get a C+D letter from Ebay because they really don't want you doing that with their customer data. Or maybe they just want a huge license fee. patent trolls start at around 50K, I'm guessing Ebay would want more.

And there goes a few thousand in development costs. Unless it's actually a patent suit, then it's development costs plus a stack of cash.
(I met someone who wrote their own bidding software that accessed customer data and bids to automate sniping within the last second. They got just such a letter from ebay)


Anyone up for it? Someone want to bankroll the project as a bit of commercial software? I know a few people who could get it done.

Anyone want to try to present it on shark tank?

Steve Birmingham

[tschock]

Originally Posted by steve B

I don't think Ebay has a feature to proactively block based on retractions. - Steve Birmingham

You are correct. They do not.

This whole situation could be easily solved by ebay allowing/exposing the bid retraction number on their "excluded sellers" option list. Similar to they way they allow you to set minimum feedback requirements for bidders who you can prohibit from bidding.

[cyseymour]

Ebay's auction system was never designed for the type of consignments that are taking place. It was originally designed so that people could sell their own items. It worked well for a while, although there was plenty of fakes and scams. Yet now we have the rampant shill bidding as consigners bid up their own items.

You have sellers such as PWCC, Probstein, Just Collect, etc, and then you have the auction houses. Either way, you are not immune to shill bidding - from the consigners on the ebay auction, or with the auction house itself. Even if the auction house is not shill bidding, a consigner could have a friend bid on the card (although there often is no issue with retractions).

Inevitably, everyone is exposed to fraud and dishonesty. PWCC/Prob/JC need to do a better job of monitoring their auctions, but an even greater problem is the image editing. This is the new steroids for baseball cards vis-a-vis the auction houses. Shill bidding has become too risky in the wake of the Mastro arrests, so image editing is the new way to inflate prices.