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