73 bids in 45 minutes

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Posted By: Adam J. Baxter

After reading the original thread on the forum for this Baseball cigar label auction, and after reviewing the bid history, etc. I threw my hat in the ring and on 5/8, I also filed a report with ebay.

Reported user: franksauct@aol.com !44463! 122497

Item number(s): 3606879646

Related user IDs: mcshyd
autonbusti

Customer concern: Believe that the seller, franksauct@aol.com may be engaged in shill bidding on auction 3606879646, Crack Team Baseball Game Cig. Box Label, Seller has received 73 bids from the same two UserID's. Both User ID's mcshyd and autobusti have 0 feedbacks and have placed each of their combined 73 bids on an average of 40-45 minutes apart. Cannot say for an absolute certainty that there is shill bidding involved, but given the facts it does seem possible.

Thanks,
Adam J. Baxter

I strongly support a fair bidding and selling atmosphere on ebay and I feel that bringing questionable auctions to the attention of everyone is important in an effort to weed out the folks who are damaging the hobby. The fact that this guy, franksauct@aol.com had two zero feedback bidders, (mcshyd and autonbusti),bidding over 70 times combined in a evidently evenly spaced manner to bring the price of this item over four hundred dollars, was too fishy to be ignored. Ebay recieved my report, however the only update I've gotten to date was an email to take a survey about the service I received when filing the report, (?).

An opinion regarding Powersellers: I have noticed a remarkable descrepency ,(sic), between regular ebay members and powersellers. Not every powerseller is bad, but ebay does seem to cater to powersellers more so then other members, especially in disputes. Of course, when a powerseller is pulling in several hundred or thousand dollars a month by posting items on ebay for auction, one can easily see how profits come into play. That doesn't make it fair, but it does happen. It's hard to argue that an uneven balance doesn't exist, when a guy can get indefinitly suspended for 3 npb's or several negatives, but some powersellers can operate with negative feedback that exceed 20 or more. Not that I'm some kind of Holy Joe or anything.