Does 100% bid activity w/one seller mean shilling?

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by travrosty

Hard to think of another explanation. There might be one and others can chime in.

if one buyer bids so much from one seller, you would think he could contact that person outside of ebay and arrange more of a bulk buy with the seller and negotiate a discount deal for buying so many things. that is what has happened to me. someone buys something, notices i have a few things they want, then emails me and gives me their list and we work out a big deal, not just continously buying onesy-twosy off of ebay from me for a year or so. that doesnt make sense.

i noticed a seller of autographs once who had another ebay member continously bidding on every single auction the guy ever put up, with most of the bids ending at about the 75% mark of the final bid. it was enough to pump up the price and keep the action going, but never enough to actually win the item. he won the item only a couple of times, and 'surprise', the item never changed hands and just went back up for a relist by the same seller.

He said the guy never paid and so he relisted it, but he still lets the guy bid on every auction and doesnt ban the guy? the guy was bidding on every autograph he was selling, no matter if it was sports, presidential, entertainment, every 5 dollar autograph, every 500 dollar autograph.

what a scam. i confronted the seller who denied it of course said he didnt know the bidder even though the feedback said otherwise. yeah, right!

it's a shame it happens and hopefully ebay keeps an eye out for patterns like that, but they might not do anything about it unless they are alerted to it.

Your first scenario doesn't really work for me. I probably have dozens of customers who buy onesy-twosy off me at a time through auctions, over a period of years.

I have other customers who buy stuff off my websites, and sometimes I do bulk discounts with them.

The two rarely mix for some reason.

Your second definitely sounds like a shiller. Somebody doesn't pay me, they lose their bidding rights, right there, unless they have a damn good reason.