Article about Collecting and Fraud in the Hobby

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by raulus

Just for fun, could you unpack this for me a bit? Are you suggesting that they don't care about shill bidding because it happens all day every day on their site and they do nothing about it? Or something else?

Yes, I'm suggesting that eBay's actions speak louder than their words. The problem of shill bidding has plagued their entire platform for decades. It is probably at least an order of magnitude worse on ebay than it is on any other auction website. Furthermore, it is not a difficult problem to solve, if solving means to reduce shill bidding activity by something like 95% or more. I could code it myself in less than a week. I also know that it's not an issue of competency, but rather one of priorities and self interests, as I have many data geek friends who either work there currently or have in the recent past (I used to live a few blocks from eBay headquarters here in San Jose). I wouldn't even be surprised to learn that someone has in fact already solved this problem but that their CFO, Steve Priest, chose not to implement it because it is something that they benefit from greatly. Whatever actions they do take toward this effort are merely done to save face, or as I believe is the case with PWCC, to tarnish the reputation of a very soon to be competitor.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Yes, I'm suggesting that eBay's actions speak louder than their words. The problem of shill bidding has plagued their entire platform for decades. It is probably at least an order of magnitude worse on ebay than it is on any other auction website. Furthermore, it is not a difficult problem to solve, if solving means to reduce shill bidding activity by something like 95% or more. I could code it myself in less than a week. I also know that it's not an issue of competency, but rather one of priorities and self interests, as I have many data geek friends who either work there currently or have in the recent past (I used to live a few blocks from eBay headquarters here in San Jose). I wouldn't even be surprised to learn that someone has in fact already solved this problem but that their CFO, Steve Priest, chose not to implement it because it is something that they benefit from greatly. Whatever actions they do take toward this effort are merely done to save face, or as I believe is the case with PWCC, to tarnish the reputation of a very soon to be competitor.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing those details. Always helpful to better understand some of the insider baseball behind the curtain.

I just wish I could get more shill bidders to bid up my items when I sell my items using the auction format on eBay. But I suppose they would only be shill bidders if I was making it happen myself, which I suppose is my problem.