Drastic changes, bidder history;

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Posted By: steve f

Private bidding has generally been a curtain for scammers. Something new and positive from ebay?

>As the internet evolves, eBay continues to strike a balance between preserving transparency and protecting our Community of members. eBay has decided to change how bid history information is displayed so bad guys cannot target bidders with fake offers using this information. In certain cases, some bidders will no longer be able to view Bidder User IDs on the Bid History page. Your User ID will be shown only to you and the seller of the item you're bidding on. Other members will see an anonymous name, such as Bidder 1, applied consistently to the Bid History page.<

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Posted By: warshawlaw

If we can't see names how can we gauge the legitimacy of bids?

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Posted By: Chris Mc

I like it for one. They started with automobile auctions. I wonder if it will also apply to viewing what other items that a person is bidding on. I can't think of a downside to the new change. IMO I think it's a positive.

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Posted By: Chris Mc

Adam good point, I did not think of that one.

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Posted By: steve f

Adam, just roll your curser over the 'bidders list' and they're history and FB credentials are shown. It'll be an adjustment and more work for these old peepers.

*Seems that the bidding history flips from the standard list to this new format when the Item hits $200.

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Posted By: martindl

Heres the whole announcement, including 'concerns' regarding shill bidding.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200701081004422.html

I think this is a step is the wrong direction. Shill bidding is a real problem and this just encourages it. Ebay has always claimed that community poilicing is what makes it so good - if you can't see who has bid, how in the world can it be policed. Ebay certinaly isn't going to do it.

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Posted By: Dave

I agree...no way in the world now to tell who's bidding on what and it would encourage shill bidding...I dont expect this to last too long...

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Posted By: barrysloate

There is a counter argument that bidders who buy expensive material on ebay want the right to remain anonymous, and I understand this; after all, you can bid in all the major auction houses without anyone knowing who you are. I'm not sure there is a difference between the two, but there has always been the perception that more shilling goes on on ebay than anywhere else. Perhaps it's true.

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Posted By: anthony

how will this encourage shill bidding? wont ebay ultimately still know who the actual bidder is? they track that. its not me or you sending them an email saying "hey ebay, i think this might be shill bidding. can you look into it?"

or, am i just missing something

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Posted By: JK

anthony, I actually think a lot of shill bidders are discovered because other bidders report suspicious bidding patterns. it will no longer be possible to do that.

one other disadvantage - I often get a sense of how strong I will need to bid based on the bidders who have left an early bid - I will no longer be able to do so.

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Posted By: JK

In addition, the toolhaus.org search features are now useless - you can no longer check an ebayer's bidding history - it only shows you items won by the bidder.

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Posted By: barrysloate

But Josh- that may be exactly the kind of anonymity bidders want. By putting their name out there, it will cost them more. There's two sides to this argument.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

It is one thing to have anonymous bidding when an auctioneer is actually running the show and presumably (I know, I know) using its best efforts to prevent shilling. It is quite another thing when a sale site that we KNOW doesn't police anything without being asked to do so makes it impossible to tell if an item is being shilled.

Remember the Broadway Rick's Strike Zone scandal? For those of you who don't, BRSZ was using a secondary ebay account to bid up its items, and either taking wins away from actual bidders by outbidding them or running up the price levels on cards to what BRSZ wanted to realize from the sales. BRSZ was outed because we could trace the bidding.

If the final auction results still show winners' names, it will be possible to trace shilling. Not call attention to it during a bid, but trace it afterwards. If they take away that too, good luck.

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Posted By: JK

well adam, the final auction results unfortunately do not reveal any bidder ids except the winner.

barry, I understand the point, just dont think its valid as cards in non-ebay auctions (where bidder ids are private) routinely sell for more on ebay. Therefore, I dont see a correlation between lower prices and privacy.

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Posted By: Max Weder

This is a backwards step for collectors, if I've understood the changes correctly. (ie active bidding history disappears over $200 and it's no longer possbile to "search by bidder" on active auctions"

As others have pointed out, it makes it impossible for the "ebay community" to detect shilling on the higher priced items.

Second, it makes it much harder to find those "special gems" where other bidders have bid early on an item, but it may be miscatergorized or misdescribed. I have about 30 bidders bookmarked on a "search by bidder" and I am constantly amazed on what they find and bid on early that I had overlooked in my searches.

Any ebay bidder who wants anonymity can preserve it by sniping, using different ebay user names and not disclosing their names to other collectors in their area. The problem of bogus second chance offers can be overcome by getting rid of this useless feature.

I think this move will cost ebay revenue, as I know I will find fewer auctions to bid on and the ending prices will be lower as a result.

Max

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Does anyone think ebay really (I mean really) wants shill bidding to stop?

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Posted By: Max Weder

Dan

I think you mistakenly put a question mark at the end of your sentence

Is there an easy link to send ebay comments on things such as this? I took a look at the home page, and couldn't easily find such a thing. Imagine that.

Max

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Posted By: Joann

Wow. I don't like it at all. I use bid lists to see if there are people I recognize bidding if I'm not sure of authenticity of an item (doesn't happen much anymore, but still).

Plus when something really different or cool goes off, I like seeing who tried for it, where it ended up, who's collecting what, etc.

It's hard for me to really understand the ebay reason. Maybe they got tired of shill bidding reports. As to phony Second Chance Offers - I know there are many and that they are getting slicker, but it's hard to believe this was the only way to stop a problem that is far from ebay's biggest issue.

Joann

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Posted By: Mark Burke

yep. ebay is as concerned about shill bidding as the government is about lowering their tax revenue by coming down hard on the oil companies.

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Posted By: scott brockelman

while scrolling over the bidding details it will tell you quite a bit of bidding history. On one group of particular items a bidder has bid on items of the sellers 84% of his 30 day history, could be concentrated buying or ?????

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Posted By: Cat

I just hate being lied to.

EBay writes that they have "decided to change how bid history information is displayed so bad guys cannot target bidders with fake offers using this information." But, all scammers can still view each sellers sells history as to who has bought from him/her and create a list of scam targets from this information. There is no way that I believe this is about fake offers. It is about legitimate offers that take place. I bought my last e90-1 Jackson a year ago by being an underbidder on a separate e90-1 auction. The seller contacted me, through e-mail, and we struck the deal...legitimately EBay lost money. I understand why they want to stop it, but don't lie to me.

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Posted By: RayB

I have already scaled back my eBay activity of late. I now sell more than 75% of all my cards privately or through the B/S/T and buy more than 50% of my cards that way also.
Ebays fee escalation started this and now with this crap regarding bidder list I feel even more justified.
Everyone should use B/S/T more.
RayB

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Posted By: Larry

This is the worst thing bay has done yet. If they want to stop fake 2nd chance offers, disable the link, not the history..EVERYONE SHOULD CALL THEIR REPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Posted By: dan mckee

Sorry Steve, I didn't mean to steal your thunder, I missed this thread. Dan.

THE ONLY WAY SHILL BIDDERS ARE DISCOVERED ARE WHEN THEY ARE TURNED IN BY OTHER MEMBERS!! Who thinks ebay is actually looking on their own????? LMAO!

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Posted By: Joann

OK. I guess when I get mad, I get mad! lol. Max provided a link for suggestions and comments to ebay, and I just sent in the message below. Yes, it may be over the top and not particularly polite, but dang - who came up with this? (And ... I do know that the plural for forum is fora, not forums. Even considered using it but I decided it sounded too stuffy.)

Text of Message Below:

Wow. Who came up with masking bidder id's in bid history? That is the worst idea I've ever heard of, and will definitely lead me to sell items in non-ebay forums just as a protest if nothing else.

I WANT people to see who's bidding on my auctions. I WANT them to see no one is running up the price. I WANT them to see there is no shilling or anything else going on. I WANT them to see it is an open, honest and transparent auction.

As a buyer, I WANT to see that I'm not being shilled. You claim to be vigilant against shilling but it happens. Now you have taken the one, single and only way that buyers have to try to protect themselves where ebay cannot, and taken it away. You have provided complete cover for shills. Nice job.

Also, people that sell fake material and engage in other fraud routinely will use the Private Auction option. In fact, in the vintage baseball card arena it's one of a buyer's first red flags that something may be amiss. Now you've saved them the trouble and covered their auctions for them. Again, nice job protecting the dishonest.

Are bogus Second Chance offers really such a big problem that this was the ONLY way to combat that? Why do I doubt that? Shilling and fraudulent sales items are much bigger problems than fake SC offers - much bigger. Why throw the technical book at this supposed problem when it actually provides cover and assitance to two bigger problems?

Bottom line - the best speculation is that what ebay is really trying to prevent is sellers using bid lists to make offline offers to underbidders for similar items. You know - so ebay may not get a fee.

So under the guise of solving a minor problem, you make fraudlent activity easier as a side effect of what is really an attempt to make more money.

For a final time - nice job.

Joann Kline

Edited to add: The point of this post was to also say that people that object really should send that sentiment to ebay - flood them with complaints if it's something we really don't like.

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Posted By: Jim Dale

Having seen a lot of crap on eBay and lack of attention to the problem by eBay over the years I really tried not to look at this negatively - but I just can't. This just protects the shills with multiple IDs, makes them harder to catch and makes it easier for ebay to ignore the problem...very sad

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Posted By: Larry

After a lengthly discussion with a knowledgable account officer, I have come to realize that their ultimate goal is profitablity, absolutely are trying to stop direct contact with buyers/sellers off line using the guise that they are stopping 2nd chance offers and other fraud.

We debated this 30 minutes, I have to hand it to him, he was seemingly convincing but when I mentioned that now sniping will be more apparent and fraudulent id's will use multiple ones, he stated sniping services are not very reliable. He states that their research shows that there really is little problem with multiple id incidents and most cases of shilling are not really picked up by the end user, their internal program monitors are much more reliable. That I know is not true. I am not a big fan of sniping but I AM A BIG FAN of independent choice for the individual buyer or seller. Having access to the information of those that buy and sell from us especially specific feedback history during an auction and others makes our business and the collector more savvy, now we are in the dark.

I really cannot see well blindfolded...very depressing.