Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by steve B

Well, I'll take a try at it.

1. What, specifically, is the shill bidding problem that you think PWCC should be responsible for preventing?

That they do as little as possible to prevent it. It is a complex problem, as there are at least a few ways to shill. Some more stoppable than others.
Bidding up to a max then retracting- Either to ensure a shill bid won't win, or to gain an advantage. They claim they were blocking people with more than a certain number of retractions with Ebays help. (Point one against the idea that they have no access to the data, which in this instance is publicly available anyway)

Bidding in increments for the same reason. This is a bit harder, since the mobile app encourages it, just keep hitting the bid button until you're winning. But someone who bids that was but doesn't ever end up with the high bid is at least a bit suspect.

The one off bid from a bidder who isn't easily connected to the seller of consignor. Like having a friend put a bid on something as a sort of reserve. (Did it once, because I actually wanted the item and did win, pay and get it. ) I'm not sure something like that could be detected at all, and it's probably not easy if it is.

The first two can be figured out from information that's available to the seller.

I don't buy some of the tells others have mentioned, like "bought widely different cards" - I have bought T206s and modern junk wax on the same day, along with stamps and bicycle parts... so no, that's not a reliable indicator.


2. What do you think the scale of that problem is?

Lets go with the old fashioned "90% of the problems are due to 1% of the people" It may be right or wrong, but it's a place to start.

3. How do you think PWCC can solve this problem?

Having at least rudimentary software that looked at the readily available information and at least flagged it for a closer look. From their own announcements Ebay was letting them do that, and helping probably by making a slightly better dataset available.

Limiting it by setting a floor value for the item bids looked at would also make it quicker.

4. How much do you think your proposed solution would cost to implement?

I suspect it would be either much more or much less than my best guess. A few years ago we were discussing something here that I didn't think would scale, and one of the software guys provided the info in less than a couple hours. I guess it did scale easily after all....
On the other hand, I've asked my wife about setting up a database for me for a card project that's way beyond what I can do myself. The response has been anywhere from "Ummm.... maybe?" to "you'll have to learn that stuff yourself. It would take too much time"

5. How effective do you believe your solution would be with respect to the percentage of reduction in shilled listings?

In the short term, probably somewhat effective. Mid term and long term, less effective since as you point out the shills can just start up another account. If it's automated, maybe more effective than I'd believe.

Now if Ebay was serious about limiting that problem across all their auctions, they could probably prevent the replacement accounts pretty easily. I'm locked out of one website that won't allow multiple accounts since I use it maybe once every few years and can't recall my username or password and starting a new account ends with "you already have an account attached to that email, log in here"

Thank you for making an honest attempt at answering my questions.

I think I will have to make a fairly lengthy post to better explain why I see this problem of how to identify and prevent shill bidding differently than everyone else in this thread, and why believe it is primarily eBay's responsibility as opposed to PWCC's. However, I don't have the bandwidth right now to explain it in detail, and anything short of that will just resort to more name calling, so I will follow up with a well explained post instead once I have the time.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Thank you for making an honest attempt at answering my questions.

I think I will have to make a fairly lengthy post to better explain why I see this problem of how to identify and prevent shill bidding differently than everyone else in this thread, and why believe it is primarily eBay's responsibility as opposed to PWCC's. However, I don't have the bandwidth right now to explain it in detail, and anything short of that will just resort to more name calling, so I will follow up with a well explained post instead once I have the time.

It is a complex topic, and waiting to do it justice seems fair.