PWCC – Announcing Formal Policy Concerning eBay Bidder & Buyer Integrity
 

My name is Betsy Huigens; Brent and I own PWCC Auctions. Our company has always considered the integrity of our auctions to be our number one priority. We take a proactive approach towards monitoring bidders and taken action when appropriate. The purpose of this post is to announce the next phase of policing. I’ve historically monitored and managed our comments on the message boards (like this one), so I know how important auction integrity is to the collecting community. It gives me great personal satisfaction to take the next step in ensuring our venue is the most trusted and honest marketplace in the world.

As members of the eBay selling community, we don’t operate in a vacuum. The same independence of software that offers transparency and protects maximum bids also somewhat constrains our ability to make quick, sweeping change. Having said that, our relationship with eBay has allowed us to convey the importance of auction integrity to the right people and we are excited by the action eBay has taken. Specifically, starting with our last auction (Premier Auction #7) eBay began a “pilot” project with PWCC specifically enabling us to take action when we notice concerning behavior.

In close partnership with eBay, we are formally announcing the following policy which we will employ to monitor bidding, effective immediately. Considering our policy, we reserve the right to contact users whose behavior falls outside this policy, and in some cases, with the support of eBay we will restrict bidding privileges and eBay may even issue suspensions on specific user IDs from the eBay marketplace.

Bid Retractions:

• The overwhelming majority of bid retractions are in violation of eBay’s stated policy. With few exceptions, all bid retractions on a PWCC auction are reported to eBay and result in an eBay-issued warning. A second retraction will result in that user ID being blocked from further participation in PWCC auctions and eBay suspending biding privileges for a period of time across the eBay platform. A third retraction will result in permanent suspension from eBay. Please spread the word.
• eBay wide, any user ID that has a high number of bid retractions on the eBay platform will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions. We believe that the majority of users who abuse the bid retraction tool will cease this behavior. We have to establish a starting point, so to start any user ID we identify that has greater than 25 bid retractions over the last six months will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions. Any user ID we identify with between 10 and 25 retractions will be notified of our policy and warned. In time, we plan to reduce the allowed number of retractions to 10, and perhaps as low as 5. Note: a user’s bid retraction count is not a statistic we can automatically filter; we appreciate the help of the collecting community in identifying user IDs which show quantities beyond our defined limits.

String Bidding:

• String Bidding is a new term we’ve coined to define a series of sequential bids at the eBay minimum bid increment. This practice can be perceived as bid manipulation because it increases the odds of a bidder exposing the maximum bid of another bidder without becoming the high bidder him or herself. Any instances of string bidding will be flagged and bidders warned and logged. Subsequent infractions may result in that user ID being blocked.

Unpaid Items:

• As has been the policy for several years, any unpaid item on a PWCC auction results in a permanent block of that user ID from participating in PWCC auctions.
• Additionally, any user ID which has two or more unpaid items strikes across the eBay platform are filtered and restricted from bidding with PWCC.

The time has come for us to respect this hobby as a commodities marketplace. Since implementing this policy last month we have already placed blocks on over 50 user IDs. It is our belief that the majority bidders whose behavior falls outside our policy are otherwise reliable and considerate members of the trading card marketplace. As such, it is our strong belief that in due time, problematic behavior will become a thing of the past. We encourage other eBay sellers to take a similar stance and aid us in supporting the integrity of the eBay platform.

Again, the integrity of our auctions is our number one priority. We ask that the collecting community on this board and others assist PWCC in identifying concerning bid behavior on any of our auctions. Please notify PWCC of any suspicious behavior by sending an email to bidmonitoring@pwccauctions.com. I can be reached at betsy@pwccauctions.com if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. We thank everyone for their commitment to the hobby.

Thank you for your kind assistance in this process.

Betsy Huigens
PWCC Auctions, LLC
website: www.pwccauctions.com
betsy@pwccauctions.com

Bravo! The bid retraction policy alone is a big move. Great to see pwcc and eBay realize and react to protect the integrity of the marketplace.

Very good. Thanks PWCC folks !! I wish all sellers would institute your policy.

Excellent! Quick question about non-paying bidders on ebay: does ebay really keep track? I had a couple of non-payers this summer, and both continued buying (and paying for!:mad:) items after I reported them.

I like these policies and they will help the hobby, thanks! The bid retractions has to stop and this seems like a good step in that direction.

eBay does keep track, but it is up to the seller to mark their restriction.

This is great news. I will happily be bidding on PWCC auctions from now on.

Great effort! Thank you . Question... If bid retractions are NOT something the software can filter for...how are you going to monitor it yourselves?

Read the last paragraph. They are hoping/expecting us to do it for them.

I know, the one thing that most people care about most ( bid retractions) they have set parameters for with plans to modify... yet have no way to monitor for infractions.

Wow, awesome leadership in the field. It's nice to know someone out there is listening. For those who think there are flaws with the proposal; of course there are, but who else is doing even this much??? It's so obvious that their intentions are spot on that I'm sure they'll iron out implementation. The fact that we have a powerful advocate with ebay's ear and they are using it to help the hobby is simply fantastic.

We get an email each time a bid is retracted on one of our auctions. Overall number of bid retractions is something we have to check for each for each user ID, so here is where we are soliciting help from the collecting community.

Thank you

Great job! Maybe at some point ebay will see the importance of transparency of bidders. But for now, this is a great move and great that you could negotiate this with ebay.

It's most definitely a step in the right direction to help lessen shill bidding and most importantly bid retractions.

Donato

This is far more than any of the other AH's are doing, (queue the cricket chirp). Much appreciated.

I applaud the efforts made by Brent and Betsy. The one change I am somewhat concerned about in regards to discouraging legitimate bidders would be the "string bidder policy". I often use smaller bid increments for various reasons. As long as the bidder has no bid retractions (which I don't), I am not sure why I should be told how many times or how often I can bid and in what increment. I would rather not have my maximum bid amount hanging out there regardless of how confidential it is. Bidding smaller increments allows me to get a sense of what the winning bid might need to be in making a strategy for my top bid or a last second snipe. Most of the time so called "string bidding" doesn't result in matching the top bid, but actually puts you as top bidder at the smallest possible increment. As long as you pay for all your auctions without retractions, it seems unnecessary to regulate this part of the process and could result in discouraging legitimate bidders like myself resulting in lower auction prices and fewer participants.

These are nice steps but the bid retraction policy should be changed. 25 bid retractions in 6 months? That's an INSANE number. No legit bidder would have 25 retractions lifetime let alone in 6 months. I think a number more like 3, or even 5, is more appropriate.

Ive had three retractions in my life. Not patting myself on the back . . . I'm sure it's similar to most of you. 25 in 6 months? Serious game playing. If someone retracts bids on 2 or 3 PWCC items in the same auction -- that were consigned by the same person - they should be barred permanently.

If this policing can't be done live, as it happens, what happens when it occurs at the last seconds of an auction, before action can be taken and the auction closes, leaving one of two scenarios:

The person who won the auction should be banned
The person is legitimate won the auction but the under bidder should have been banned

Will there be a price correction to reflect the policy?

How will we know that this person is actually banned? I came across a forum that had a blocked list based on botched transactions and they published a list of reasons. Is this something that can be done?

Good job
 

Good job with getting eBay on board with these policy changes. We have been waiting for this for years, and the changes will benefit both sellers and buyers.

People on this forum have been complaining for years that the eBay sellers aren't responding to information in regard to bid retractions and shill bidding, and now we have a chance to make you aware of problems by providing our input.

Thank you very much! Rick

I agree with Chris and Steve that 25 is way too many to tolerate. My lifetime total, I am pretty sure, is zero. Any measure is a step in the right direction, but I don't understand why it can't have more teeth right away.

Agree 100%.

25 retractions is ridiculous: one or two is realistic. People make mistakes. People don't make them 24 times in six months...Especially in light of the string bidding policy, which mistakenly targets a legitimate activity. I don't know if anyone at PWCC actually bids on items, but eBay (and especially the mobile app) offers one-touch incremental bidding. When I am on the road or it is close to the end of an auction I will often just hit the button repeatedly rather than trying to type in a number. I don't see how you separate the one-touch legit bidders from those fishing for a top bid. Now, if you blocked all bidders with 2 or more retractions in six months, you'd deter the retractors from playing a fishing game while allowing legit bidding activity with the one-touch platforms.

I also don't understand the problem with "string bidding". If I bid $1 a 100 times and become high bidder and pay for the item is that bad?

+1

I won't change that tactic for various reasons. It will be interesting to see if I get cited. Regardless, I applaud PWCC for their actions.

I think smaller bid increments are healthy making the market more liquid in a way. Bidders can better anticipate where the auction might end and this can help prevent wild price fluctuations at the close. We are not bidding in a vacuum and having more bids and bidders in small increments can smooth out that process. I think eliminating the bid retractors will take care of the malicious bidders and messing with bid increments is an unnecessary and potentially deleterious step.

Really. As long as you pay up in the end, who cares how you bid?

I've been bidding on ebay for seemingly 100 years and the only retraction I've ever had was a buy-it-now on a card that I didn't realize was OPC and not Topps. I immediately contacted the seller and he cancelled the bid. So, I don't even think that qualifies as a retraction. My point is, I wholeheartedly agree with everyone else that 25 retractions is just way beyond the pale. 25????????? Absolutely ridiculous.

Happy to hear what pwcc is doing!

This is great news.

I had several retractions when I first came back to the hobby. I bid on a bunch of xmas racks before I did my homework. After I bid on about 10 of them, I did a little research, and then I retracted all my bids.

Thank you for taking a stance against string bidders. As a bidder, I find it annoying and will OFTEN retract my bid if ran up by a string bidder. I just get the feeling I'm being set up to be shilled and I won't play that. This is long overdue and I hope more sellers take note.

If I read between the lines, I think what Brent and Betsy are saying is "String Bidding" and then retracting, or String-bidding and not paying, will be meet with sever punishment.

String bidding alone is probably not a fireable offense, IMO, even though I hate it. It does seem suspect, and you could make a strong case that string-bidding is the gateway drug to retracting/shilling and non-payment.

If someone has a long history of on-time payments and no retractions, but is also a string-bettor, I can't imagine your going to be on their radar.

nice job
 

Brent great job know you have to start somewhere but 25 bid retractions is way to many

Start imagining it.

As people have pointed out not all string bidding is nefarious, but during the craziness we saw a few months ago there is no question certain guys were string bidding on big ticket cards to try to push up the price as far as they could push it.

If the bidders risk buying the item it doesn't matter what bid increment they use or how often they bid. The retraction is the sin here. It allows the bidder to fish for the high bid with no risk of getting stuck with the card. That is why 25 strikes is asinine, fake pseudo-security. I mean that's "my toddler BINed my entire watch list" level error.

If the purpose of these changes is to stop shill bidding it won't work. If I represented a class of aggrieved card buyers suing PWCC for unfair trade practices that 25 number would need to be explained and I don't think it would go over well.

Easily explained. I made 25 mistakes. :) Now do I win?

I agree, the 25 retractions should leave off the 5 part.....2-3 seems about right.

I try very hard to avoid rushing to judgment on any issue. So further investigation was needed on the issue of "string bidding". As a logical first step in my investigation, I went to my EBay summary page and typed "string" in the Search box. I suggest that you do the same. I strongly support "string" bidding as a result of my investigation.;)

I was going to comment on this "String bidding" scenario when it was first posted but I wasn't sure, nor am I still, what exactly it means? :confused:

If I am wrong, please correct me.

My take is, it means bidding on cards incrementally until you find out what the highest bid is in order to become the highest bidder?

If that is the case, I do not understand the need for this to be regulated/policed. Numerous times, when I see a card I want that already has bids placed for it, I will enter the minimum higher to become the top bidder. Sometimes/most of the times, my initial bid is not enough to become the highest bidder so I enter/choose/opt for the next $ amount until I beat the current bidder therefore becoming the highest bidder.

If the card later gets bid up again, I will either choose to beat it again or walk away if it is more than I want to bid or can afford. Am I now labeled as a "String Bidder"?

I also agree, 25 retractions is excessive in that time frame. I believe I have 2-3 total since I began bidding on E-Bay and my last one months and months ago but those were rookie mistakes and I am much more careful/thorough before I decide to bid on something now.

String in the search box had some interesting returns .:).

Quite eye-opening frank. I may be forced to study this issue for an extended time.

It would be nice if Ebay (or PWCC for that matter) would block sniper software so auction items would be won in a fair bidding process, as compared to losing an item you have been winning for 6 days and losing it with one second to go in the auction. That is my biggest issue, who has not lost an item with seconds to go and felt "ripped off "by some high-tech computer sniper software that is nothing short "illegal". Only solution..if you can't beat em..join em.
One solution to this problem ......, you should be "blocked" from bidding, if you have never bid on the item in the last 10 minutes before the auction ends.
This solution at the very least,would allow the seller get higher prices for items for sale, as opposed to a prospective bidder getting "blocked out" by the bidding ending with 1 second left in the auction due to sniper software.

I have never felt ripped off, only disappointed. I don't use a Snipe service but have won a couple cards with just seconds left (lost many too) but I understand the beauty of them especially when the auction ends late.

Sniping services are available to everyone, as far as I know?

Solution = Snipe higher.

In American English, judgement is generally considered a misspelling of judgment for all uses of the word, notwithstanding individual preferences

Agree with some others regarding string bidding, I didn't really appreciate being told how to bid or that I need to bid in larger increments. If this is going to be a problem moving forward, you can go ahead and block me from bidding in your auctions.

Mike.Pugeda

Great work PWCC team. Seeing funny business in the past I've been reluctant to bid on many items. I have won a few and with these new policies I anticipate more packages in the future.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Never understand why ebay doesn't institute dynamic endings for their auctions. Would certainly eliminate the sniping issue. sellers and therefore ebay would also make more money.

I fail to see the "issue" with sniping.

Can someone please tell me if I have this correct or if I am out in left field with what I think "String bidding" is?

Thanks

Dale

I just did an ebay search for "dynamic endings". Got the same results as Frank's suggestion for "string".

+ 1

I almost always snipe, but have on occasion bid in increments until I am the high bidder or find that the high bid is higher than I want to pay. If I never retract ( and I don't), I would think that should be ok

25 retractions is too high a threshold , by at least 20... unless the purpose is to give folks who have clearly been bidding inappropriately a second chance going forward with the new criteria.

Still, I view this as a positive development

real case senario
 

hi Brent, currently, in your auction (http://www.ebay.com/itm/1935-Goudey-...-/351861695474), your high bidder has 3 bid retractions in the last 6 months while the underbidder has 9 bid retractions in the last 6 months. Does anything need to be done with these two bidders? thanks,
Jim Loewke

Manually entered snipes.....
 

I often get outbid in the final 3 seconds of auctions. So be it.
I did not bid High enough, and someone

else was willing to bid higher than my highest bid.
Simple.

I almost always snipe manually,
(have never used a snipe program).

"We have to establish a starting point, so to start any user ID we identify that has greater than 25 bid retractions over the last six months will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions. Any user ID we identify with between 10 and 25 retractions will be notified of our policy and warned. In time, we plan to reduce the allowed number of retractions to 10, and perhaps as low as 5. Note: a user’s bid retraction count is not a statistic we can automatically filter; we appreciate the help of the collecting community in identifying user IDs which show quantities beyond our defined limits."

Not to jump on your post as not useful (it is), but I think you provided a good example to support PWCC's position of STARTING with 25 and reducing over time. I would expect that for PWCC to start at 5 (as some would suggest) would become an administrative nightmare and the whole impetus would become a non-starter.

It seems to me that PWCC is doing much of the 'heavy lifting' here with the 'blessing' of ebay. Just because PWCC is taking the initiative doesn't mean that the retract-a-holics won't be going elsewhere.

correct
 

you are right Taylor; thanks for the note. i will not be bidding in this auction going forward though.
jim

Let's be blunt with the bid retractions. You can't control these people on the rest of Ebay, you can only stop them in their tracks from doing it in your own auctions.

It's obvious a lot of the heavy hitters have been using bid retractions as part of their bidding strategy for awhile now. This is not a myth, it's not a unicorn...it has been happening, and frequently.

One guy has admitted here on Net54, and there's tons out there who won't say a word about it, but also do the same.

PWCC doesn't want to throw these guys out with the bathwater and crater their own auctions in the process. They are creating a starting point, to hopefully get the word out, help curtail their practices outside of PWCC and maybe reign them in a little at a time down the road.

It's great to see them doing any kind of policing. The absolute simplest thing would be for Ebay to do it on a software level, sitewide.......but that might cost the bosses at the top a few pennies off their bonus checks, so we will likely never see it from them.

It's sad that Ebay is making one of their best customers do their police work for them.......and I'm saying this as somebody who has never, ever bid in a PWCC auction.

No Dale. What you're doing isn't "string" bidding. "String" bidding is when someone is "fishing" to see if they can find out where the maximum bid is by continuously bidding with minimum increments. When someone does that, they can sometimes see what the high bid is before they actually reach it because the incremental bid amount will suddenly change. Hope that makes sense. It's kinda hard to explain...
That being said, I always snipe...

Valiant Effort, but....
 

I applaud ebay and PWCC for at least giving recognition to the issues plaguing this industry. However, the concept of sellers policing themselves has forever failed. Here I mean sellers as a community, not singling anyone out. This is an unregulated and in most cases privately held industry which has vitually no business transparency. If the sellers truly want to earn or restore trust, they need to subject themselves to independent financial audits to assure their business integrity, and report those results to the community. Those with the best audit results would be the most trusted sellers. Tweedling around with little facets of an auction like the ones discussed here are addressing the symptoms, not the illness.

I agree with some of the others in that PWCC should give bidders advance notice of the # of retractions that they will allow, and give bidders time to "wind down" the number of retractions that they use as part of their bidding strategies. I've only had 2-3 retractions in nearly 20 years on ebay, but some bidders do use it more frequently, some for nefarious purposes, others not. If PWCC does not give bidders time to wind down their retractions, then these bidders would need to create new user id's, or not bid at all.

Here are some retraction reasons that I have heard, some of which may be legitimate:

(1) Honest error. You meant to bid $30, but accidentally entered $300. Personally, this has happened to me a couple of times.

(2) Retracting a Best Offer. You are interested in an ebay listing with Best Offer, but the price is a little high. However, ebay comes out with a 10% ebay bucks promotion, which will make the listing worth it, but only if the seller accepts your best offer price. You submit your best offer, but the seller does not respond to it before the ebay bucks promotion expires. Since your offer took into account the promotion, you retract your best offer.

(3) You agree to an off-ebay deal with the seller on which you have the high bid. For example, you see a card that you are interested in with a Start Price of $500 for a 7 day ebay auction. You put down a bid on that card for $500. However, then you chat with the seller, and you agree to purchase that card off-ebay for $750. Since you've agreed to this deal, you retract your bid on the ebay listing, so that the ebay seller will not be hit with an ebay Final Value Fee for ending the ebay listing early.

(4) You retract your high bid on an ebay auction because you've already purchased the same item elsewhere (or have spent the money that you planned to purchase that card on another item). Obviously, this is sketchy, unethical territory where you really should honor your bid. You put the bid down, so even if you bought the same card at a better price elsewhere, you should be prepared to honor that bid you placed.

I had a similar case happen to me a couple of years ago on PWCC. I was interested in purchasing a 1975 mid-high grade complete set, and PWCC had a number of these in that auction. I put snipes on 2-3 of these sets. I lost all of them. After I lost these sets, I looked at the bidding history and I saw that for two of the sets, I was the immediate underbidder, and that the same bidder had won both of those sets. The very next day, I received a second chance offer for one of those sets (which I declined). I highly suspect that the winning bidder didn't want both sets, so he just picked the better one, and told PWCC that he didn't want the other one (or made a mistake, some other excuse). This is because I received the second chance offer the day after the auction ended, and not a couple of weeks due to typical non-paying bidder case. I would hope that in this case, PWCC will in the future ban this bidder as a non-paying bidder from their auctions.

(5) You retract a bid in order to see a seller's hidden reserve. As a seller you can place reserves in your auction listings. If a buyer wants to see the seller's reserve, they can place a very high bid, where the seller's reserve is exposed, and then retract that bid after they consider whether the reserve is reasonable. However, ebay expressly forbids this type of bid retraction (although some bidders do it anyway).

(6) You retract after seeing the high bidders max bid. Again, another illegal bid retraction. This is the case where the bidder is not related to the seller in any way, but wants to see what the current high bidder's max bid is. You bid to a very high level, and then retract it. Again, although this is not shill bidding, this type of bidding/retraction is unethical and forbidden by ebay.

Banning string bidding is like killing a mosquito with a bazooka. Banning the bid retractors and those fail to pay will take care of the dishonest bidders no matter what method of bidding they use. Period. If you use string bidding or small bid increments and win and pay why does it matter what increments you use. Where do you draw the line on what is illegal string bidding? How long between subsequent bids is acceptable? 5 seconds? 5 minutes? 5 hours? What if it is the end the auction and your bid falls short and you want to bid again and again in a short period of time without placing a nuclear bid and take the chance of getting into a sniping war that ends up making you pay 2-3 times what you wanted? String bidding gives you more control over the final price and the ability to adjust price on the fly.

Well, I guess I have become a fan of string bidding! Altho my wife will have a little to say about that. Told her it was recommended by a Dr I know!

Seriously. I have bid on several items thru PWCC where one or more bidders have placed 20 or so incremental bids. Normally these bids are far short of final prices. Cant blame a guy for trying, altho several had multiple retractions in their history. Looks to me like dealing with one may deal with a bunch of the other.

Oh yeah, I've made a few "string bids". Like two or three small incrementals when the bids are larger than I have expectd, having blown past my max bid and I have no clue where they are going. Usually on higher end graded cards I need to upgrade a set.....will I do this again? Probably. Just being honest.

Nope, gotta call BS on this one. Blocking late bidders doesn't raise prices; at most it makes people bid earlier. If you snipe you put in a max bid that is executed in the last several seconds of the auction. That max bid is your choice, and that doesn't change regardless of the closing time.

Sniping software is popular because it prevents shilling: if I don't bid until the last few seconds, no one can shill me because there is nothing to run up. Also, I bid on stuff from all over the world, with closing times in various zones. And I have a business to run. I don't have the opportunity to sit on an auction close, especially if it is on the East Coast or overseas, so a snipe program frees me from having to pay attention to specific closes. I lodge my snipe with the service and forget about it until the auction ends.

The only bid retraction I remember making was due to different computer screens. I bid on an item at work one day thinking nice card but when I got home the flaws on the card were much more visible on my home screen and it wasn't so nice after all.

25 bid retractions is a ridiculous number. Any amount over 2 or 3 every 10-15 years is too many much less 25 in a six month span. I can't imagine someone being stupid enough to make the same mistake that many times in such a short time. They are obviously dishonest so ban/block them and be done with it.

Judgment is a legal term and I stand corrected by the honorable attorney. Long live your medulla oblongata, Peter.

I like string bidding as well....I mean...Ebay is allowing you to bid that minimum. That almost reminds me of the scene on the movie Office Space. Do you really want just the bare minimum of 15 pins? Or do you want to be like Brian and wear 47 pins?? If you want me to wear 47 pins, just make 47 pins the minimum.

My guess is that string bidding will be analysed and dealt with accordingly. I doubt Brent and Team will prohibit any legitimate bidding. This policy is a great start to helping the hobby rid itself of some of ebay's ills...

I don't really understand the string bid theory (not to be confused with string theory).

Is the theory that a sham string bidder is trying to drive the price up but then quit just before he becomes the high bidder?

Or that the sham string bidder will drive the price up until they actually become the high bidder, but hope someone else will then outbid their last incremental bid?

Or is it that they drive the price up and then retract their last winning bid?

Or maybe some combination of the three?

I always just thought string bidders were inexperienced with eBay and didn't know what they were doing.

String bidders bid like $1 at a time. About 20 times in a row....rather than just one bid that is $20 higher.

What we saw over the early half of the year was the same guys trying to drive up the price without winning.

Thanks for the reply, Daniel. I appreciate it.

I see, so a string bidder who's not really intending to win knows when to stop. That's the part that I was not understanding before this explanation.

If a string bidder knows to stop at $1499, why does he want to waste his time bidding in dollar intervals to jack the price up? If it's sitting at $1000, just bid once at $1499 and go to bed. Why bother wasting time with interim bids.

Because if the leading bidder entered an odd amount like $1475.85, the string bidder might find that out $1 at a time.

He bids $1471, the high bid goes to $1472

He then bids $1473, and the high bid goes to $1474

He then bids $1475 and the high bid goes to $1475.85.

Now he knows to stop.

I saw that time and again just randomly looking at bidding histories in certain types of auctions.

Quoting eBay's policy on shill bidding:

"Policy overview

Shill bidding happens when anyone—including family, friends, roommates, employees, or online connections—bids on an item with the intent to artificially increase its price or desirability. "


IMO, based on eBay's definition of shill bidding, a "string" bidder is nothing more than a shill bidder when their sole intent as a bidder is to "artificially increase" an item's by price by placing consecutive but small increment bids only to reveal the high bidders top bid while they have no intention of bidding to win the item.

In other words, per eBay's definition of shill bidding, string bidding is shill bidding due to the bidders intent to artificially increase an item's price.

Yeah but without a retraction you cannot tell whether a bid is legit. My view is that if a bidder always risks winning then the bid is legit. Solution: prohibit a retraction. Put the bidder in jeopardy of becoming high bidder and he won't risk it on a high priced item.