Update on PWCC Bid Monitoring Program

[Snapolit1]

I don't understand the hostility directed at PWCC for at least trying something. I have had real issues with them in the past unrelated to this issue, but it seems like some of you are expecting them to solve eBay weaknesses and cure a few diseases at the same time.

It may be a surprise to some of you, but PWCC can't tell eBay how to run their business. Yes, there is a problem with apparent shill bidding and BS bid retractions on some of their items. Maybe a not insignificant number of their items. There are consignors out there who will have friends and family, and maybe even themselves with alternative accounts, pump up the price of their auction items. This is an auction fact of life. Happens on eBay and happens everywhere else. Could happen at the church auction down the street. The guy bidding against you may have no interest other than helping someone else make more money. Deal with it. It's reality.

As far as bid retractions go, I have no evidence that they are worse for PWCC than any other major card seller. Nor do I have any belief that they are any worse than say some dude selling 10,000 hummels or 10,000 watches a month on ebay. Game playing will go on. If eBay allows people to retract bids with impunity, and PWCC reaches out to them to do something, I take this as both a tacit admission that there is a problem here that should be addressed and a positive sign that Brent thinks his company's credibility is taking a meaningful hit.

My final point is that I DO NOT find 5 bid retractions a day high for an outfit that often has 5,000+ items listed at a time. That might get 25,000+ bids in a day I'd guess. 5 or 10 or even 20 of those bids are retracted. I'd say at least 50% of those could have been genuine errors. Doesn't seem overly crazy to me.

Long winded way of saying that it seems many of you have real problems with eBay and blame PWCC for them.

If someone is retracting more than 5 times on PWCC in a 3 or 6 month period they should be barred from any PWCC auctions for 6 months. Although that probably wouldn't solve the problem anyway, as a person who wants to defraud others can just open a new account.

[PhillipAbbott79]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

If someone is retracting more than 5 times on PWCC in a 3 or 6 month period they should be barred from any PWCC auctions for 6 months. Although that probably wouldn't solve the problem anyway, as a person who wants to defraud others can just open a new account.

And they can stop that also. Require them to buy and receive 10 feedbacks before being allowed to bid. Stop it, no. Make it much harder, yes. Easily, without getting EBay involved.

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by PhillipAbbott79

And they can stop that also. Require them to buy and receive 10 feedbacks before being allowed to bid. Stop it, no. Make it much harder, yes. Easily, without getting EBay involved.

That's true, but I would be hardly surprised to learn that some dudes have been carefully cultivating 10 or 12 separate eBay accounts over the course of a number of years to deal with precisely those kinds of issues.

[Leon]

+2.7 In my experiences almost every time I think of something,
it has been thought of before, usually much before.

Back to the subject. Of course PWCC is an advertiser so that is my biased in it. My view is PWCC is headed in the right direction but as with most others I wish it were a bit quicker. From recent, first hand experience I know change takes time on the bay...

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

That's true, but I would be hardly surprised to learn that some dudes have been carefully cultivated 10 or 12 separate eBay accounts over the course of a number of years to deal with precisely those kinds of issues.

[Bored5000]

Originally Posted by PhillipAbbott79

And they can stop that also. Require them to buy and receive 10 feedbacks before being allowed to bid. Stop it, no. Make it much harder, yes. Easily, without getting EBay involved.

If someone is inclined to shill their own auction, requiring 10 feedbacks is pretty meaningless.

[PhillipAbbott79]

Originally Posted by Bored5000

If someone is inclined to shill their own auction, requiring 10 feedbacks is pretty meaningless.

You are not going to stop the one guy that wants to shill one auction to sell the one baseball card he owns and will ever own, but you can make it harder for the chronic offenders.

It is still one extra step. One extra PayPal account sign up. 10 fake transactions per account, time to leave the feedback, or payment on a real item they likely don't want. Trails and evidence of fraud. One extra EBay registration.The accounts will eventually be blocked for non paying bids, shilling, and retractions.

Would you want to do this for every auction you list an item in, every 30 days for multiple accounts? The fact that it can be circumvented doesn't mean it is meaningless. The option has been there for 20 years for a reason.

[Bored5000]

Originally Posted by PhillipAbbott79

You are not going to stop the one guy that wants to shill one auction to sell the one baseball card he owns and will ever own, but you can make it harder for the chronic offenders.

It is still one extra step. One extra PayPal account sign up. 10 fake transactions per account, time to leave the feedback, or payment on a real item they likely don't want. Trails and evidence of fraud. One extra EBay registration.The accounts will eventually be blocked for non paying bids, shilling, and retractions.

Would you want to do this for every auction you list an item in, every 30 days for multiple accounts? The fact that it can be circumvented doesn't mean it is meaningless. The option has been there for 20 years for a reason.

I get it that you are trying to find a solution to the problem, but many of the worst chronic offenders of massive retractions have feedback in the thousands and still shill/retract with impunity. As far as requiring 10 feedbacks creating evidence of fraud, again, there are many, many accounts on eBay with feedback in the hundreds or thousands that are on the site despite many retractions.

If eBay doesn't care about accounts with feedback in the thousands that rampantly shill auctions, they are going to be vigilant about someone with 10 feedbacks?

As far as non-paying bids, why would anyone buy an expensive item then not pay if the goal if just to build up your suggested 10 feedbacks. The easy way around that would simply be to buy 10 items at 99 cents or "buy" from yourself/a friend with a different account to simply build up feedback.

[Republicaninmass]

Originally Posted by Bored5000

As far as non-paying bids, why would anyone buy an expensive item then not pay if the goal if just to build up your suggested 10 feedbacks. The easy way around that would simply be to buy 10 items at 99 cents or "buy" from yourself/a friend with a different account to simply build up feedback.

I've been convinced for a while that some of these said consignors/consignees have multiples people/multiple accounts bidding up items

edited: the watch count alone, having HUNDREDS more than others sellers with the exact same items, lends credence to this theory

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

I've been convinced for a while that some of these said consignors/consignees have multiples people/multiple accounts bidding up items

edited: the watch count alone, having HUNDREDS more than others sellers with the exact same items, lends credence to this theory

Agreed...I can sell the EXACT same card and grade and get nowhere near the watch count, bids, nor final sales price. And I am OK with that.

[nrm1977]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

I've been convinced for a while that some of these said consignors/consignees have multiples people/multiple accounts bidding up items

edited: the watch count alone, having HUNDREDS more than others sellers with the exact same items, lends credence to this theory

I agree 100%.

On a side note, I still don't understand why there are 40+bids on an auction that is 10 days long with 9 days left. To me, this makes no logical sense. Meaning, why are bidding wars occurring with 9 days left on a 10 day auction? This alone is a huge red flag. What is stopping a cosigner to have 10 of his buddies drive the price up on day 1 of a 10 day auction? Which IMO is happening a decent amount in PWCC auctions.

Maybe I'm just not following why someone would even bid on a 10 day auction on day number 1? If I'm interested in a said auction, it first goes in my watch-list, I then look for other similar examples of the card on ebay, I come up with a price I'm willing to pay and place my bid with 10 seconds left. I can understand a bunch of bids coming in on the last day of the auction but, not on day 1 of a 10 day auction. It's very suspect to me.

[Exhibitman]

Meaningless window dressing, the asinine equivalent of saying that you are cracking down on drunk driving because you only allow a driver ten DUIs before suspending his license. Here's an idea: bar any bidder with more than two retractions and do it now. All this waiting is nonsense. No amount of double-talk and graphics conceals the fact that your auctions are riddled with fraud, that you know it, and that you would rather aid the crooks in stealing from your customers than resolve the problem.

[JustinD]

I think until eBay returns to days past this is going to be the status quo.

Why was it so easy to avoid this 7 - 10 years ago? I could adjust listing settings to avoid negative feedback, low feedback and npbs.

eBay should bring back negative feedback for buyers. If they are worried about the return of bidder blackmail, then provide it only in the case of an non- payer.

Auction settings need to return to the ability to block low feedback, negative feedback ratings and non-payers. This should not be my responsibility as a seller to locate non-payers, it should be eBay's responsibility to alert me. Also any bidder should lose the ability to withdraw bids at anytime without approval of the seller. I don't care that accidents happen, you should get dinged and if it happens twice in 6 months your incompetence should get you banned for a minimal year.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Meaningless window dressing, the asinine equivalent of saying that you are cracking down on drunk driving because you only allow a driver ten DUIs before suspending his license. Here's an idea: bar any bidder with more than two retractions and do it now. All this waiting is nonsense. No amount of double-talk and graphics conceals the fact that your auctions are riddled with fraud, that you know it, and that you would rather aid the crooks in stealing from your customers than resolve the problem.

In 18 or so years on ebay I have never retracted a bid to the best of my memory. I am sure most guys here could say the same. The 25 in 6 month limit was meaningless. I guess 10 is better but I still can't imagine 10 legitimate retractions in that timeframe, unless it was some real one-off situation where a seller misrepresented cards and the bidder found out and backed out of a group of listings.

Will a motivated individual work around getting blocked? Some will. But that doesn't excuse the lack of a more sincere effort.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I don't understand the hostility directed at PWCC for at least trying something. I have had real issues with them in the past unrelated to this issue, but it seems like some of you are expecting them to solve eBay weaknesses and cure a few diseases at the same time.

It may be a surprise to some of you, but PWCC can't tell eBay how to run their business. Yes, there is a problem with apparent shill bidding and BS bid retractions on some of their items. Maybe a not insignificant number of their items. There are consignors out there who will have friends and family, and maybe even themselves with alternative accounts, pump up the price of their auction items. This is an auction fact of life. Happens on eBay and happens everywhere else. Could happen at the church auction down the street. The guy bidding against you may have no interest other than helping someone else make more money. Deal with it. It's reality.

As far as bid retractions go, I have no evidence that they are worse for PWCC than any other major card seller. Nor do I have any belief that they are any worse than say some dude selling 10,000 hummels or 10,000 watches a month on ebay. Game playing will go on. If eBay allows people to retract bids with impunity, and PWCC reaches out to them to do something, I take this as both a tacit admission that there is a problem here that should be addressed and a positive sign that Brent thinks his company's credibility is taking a meaningful hit.

My final point is that I DO NOT find 5 bid retractions a day high for an outfit that often has 5,000+ items listed at a time. That might get 25,000+ bids in a day I'd guess. 5 or 10 or even 20 of those bids are retracted. I'd say at least 50% of those could have been genuine errors. Doesn't seem overly crazy to me.

Long winded way of saying that it seems many of you have real problems with eBay and blame PWCC for them.

If someone is retracting more than 5 times on PWCC in a 3 or 6 month period they should be barred from any PWCC auctions for 6 months. Although that probably wouldn't solve the problem anyway, as a person who wants to defraud others can just open a new account.

For what it's worth, I tend to agree with Steve. As a lawyer involved in litigation, I constantly see the worst in people--it often seems that whenever money is at stake, morals and ethical behavior get thrown by the wayside, and the more bucks that are at stake, the more the behavior tends towards "anything goes!" I used to get mad as an appellate lawyer when my insurance company retained opponent would write a brief twisting the facts and law and making as many misrepresentations as possible within the allotted page limit. But then I would cool down and simply dismantle these concoctions in my reply brief, and it almost always went badly for opposing counsel who engaged in such tactics at oral argument before a 3-judge panel. But back to the main point: wherever and whenever there is money to be made through unethical behavior, honor and integrity serve as no barrier at all to a substantial portion of the population. It appears to me that Brent is at least trying to do something to head some of this BS off, and as determined as the scammers are, it's like Ringo Starr said way back in 1971: "It don't come easy."

Best regards,

Larry

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

FWIW I just sorted all their listings by "Rookie" and Highest Price. Went through the first dozen or so and was pleasantly surprised to see almost no retractions. Worst was 6 (which is still concerning) but I checked the top 5 bidders (not bids, but distinct bidders) of each auction and the vast majority were zero, with a couple of 2's and 3's and the one 6. I know it's fashionable to bash PWCC, but this does look like improvement to me.

PS. Brent, until you can pull the data from ebay directly sorting by highest price or number of bids and then examining bid histories would be more productive then random, or trying to focus on one type of card.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

FWIW I just sorted all their listings by "Rookie" and Highest Price. Went through the first dozen or so and was pleasantly surprised to see almost no retractions. Worst was 6 (which is still concerning) but I checked the top 5 bidders (not bids, but distinct bidders) of each auction and the vast majority were zero, with a couple of 2's and 3's and the one 6. I know it's fashionable to bash PWCC, but this does look like improvement to me.

PS. Brent, until you can pull the data from ebay directly sorting by highest price or number of bids and then examining bid histories would be more productive then random, or trying to focus on one type of card.

Just for comparison if you look through your own listings do your bidders have that type of bid retraction rate? I would guess they don't but am curious.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

I run very few auctions anymore, so not a great basis for comparison. That being said, I was more pointing out the progress within his auctions. 6 months ago the numbers would've looked nothing like what I discovered. Again I think there were 4 bidders out of about 48 that I checked that had ANY retractions and only one of those had more than 3. These were the top bidders on the most expensive items he has going.

[Bored5000]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

FWIW I just sorted all their listings by "Rookie" and Highest Price. Went through the first dozen or so and was pleasantly surprised to see almost no retractions. Worst was 6 (which is still concerning) but I checked the top 5 bidders (not bids, but distinct bidders) of each auction and the vast majority were zero, with a couple of 2's and 3's and the one 6. I know it's fashionable to bash PWCC, but this does look like improvement to me.

PS. Brent, until you can pull the data from ebay directly sorting by highest price or number of bids and then examining bid histories would be more productive then random, or trying to focus on one type of card.

When I was looking at the Jordan listings, I put his name in into the search of PWCC auctions, then sorted by most bids. I expected to find a couple auctions here and there that looked a bit shady, but was a bit surprised when I really looked at how rampant the retractions/shilling was.