How To Spot Shill Bidding on eBay

Welcome once again to another of my eBay artilcles. This week I have decided to take a look at shill bidders and what you can do to spot them. Shill bidding is a major problem on eBay and can cost you a lot of money, chances are that you have already been a victim of shill bidding without you even know it!

Anyway enough chit chat, here is my latest article below:-

If you are a user of eBay then the chances are, that you have already come across the term “shill bidding”. Shill bidding, is bidding that is used to artificially inflate the price of a certain item. Shill bidding usually takes place when the seller of an item wishes to increase the price, or generate interest in the item. The seller would usually get a friend or family member to bid on the item in question so that it looks like the item is more popular than it actually is, sometimes the seller may also use a second eBay account to increase the price of the item.

Shill bidding is prohibited by eBay and rightfully so. In my time I have been the victim of a shill bidding eBay scam. I was bidding on a digital camera and was surprised to see the price increase dramatically every time I made a bid, each bid that I made was followed by a new bid from an eBay user without any feedback. I thought this was very strange so I contacted eBay, they confirmed to me that the seller was using a second account to increase the price of the item, in the hopes that I would keep bidding and be made to pay a higher price. The listing was pulled by eBay and the seller had both of their accounts suspended. I was lucky but unfortunately many others are not so fortunate.

Shill bidding is a huge problem on eBay and you may have already been a victim of this scam without even realising it! Hopefully after reading this guide you will be able to spot if a shill bidder is bidding on one of your auctions.

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The first step to take if you feel you have been a victim of shill bidding is to look at the “Bidders List” for the item that you are bidding on. Usually an account that is used for shill bidding will have very little, if any feedback. The account could even have been created within the last 30 days with the sole intention of shill bidding for the seller, you can see if the member is new as they will have a small orange icon next to their user ID.

You should also do some research into the sellers other sales. Look at the sellers other sales via their feedback profile and see if the shill bidder was bidding on those items as well. If the shill bidder was bidding then the chances are that the seller is using a second account, or the account of a friend to shill bid.

Finally, another favoured method to spot a shill bidder is to look at how much the bids are increasing by. Usually a shill bidder will only place a “Nibbler” bid, this is a bid that is only slightly higher than your bid but then puts the impetuous on you to bid on the item again. The shill bidder will keep on bidding until you stop, they will then retract their final bid leaving you to pay for the item at a higher price than you should have paid!

If you believe that you have been a victim of a shill bidding scam or think that an eBay member may be shill bidding then you need to contact eBay. You can contact eBay using the contact form on their site, if eBay finds that the user has indeed been shill bidding then the all of the accounts associated with the shill bidder will be suspended.

The End 🙂

I hope that you liked the article, I spent a couple of hours putting it altogether. It was definatly one of the hardest subjects for me to research but I hope I have given you some valuable information. Pick an easier subject for me next time 🙂

As always I will be reading the comments you leave and will do my best to reply to them all. So if you have any feelings (good or bad) for my newsletters please let me know!

Until next week,
Dan

My Pictures – 21st June 2006

I wasn`t planning on having a big pictures section but I really wanted too see how long Imageshack would store my pictures for. So this seems like as good a way as any!

These pictures were taken by me, today. As soon as I started snapping it started to rain so I only managed to get a couple of half decent pics!

Both of the snaps were taken in a top secret location in North Yorkshire, England. If anyone can guess where it is I may even give you a prize!

Why England have no chance of Winning the Wold Cup

I don`t just post about Internet Marketing and E-Books you know, i`m also a football (soccer for you yanks!) fan. Here are my views on England so far in this world cup.

As I sit here typing, we are just 8 hours away from Englands final group stage game against Sweden. England are already through to the knock out stages after struggling past two of the lesser teams in the competition – Trinidad & Tobago and Paraguay.

These two lesser teams have already been able to expose the weeknesses and the predictability of the England team. I hate to think what will happen if England (im English and support England by the way!) come up a half decent team.

Don`t get me wrong, I hope England do well but do I think it will happen – NOT A CHANCE!

This England team have been hyped up to the moon by the so called “experts in the know”, saying we have the best crop of players since we last won the competition in 1966……have they been watching the same group of players as the rest of us?

I am constantly hearing about how we have the best midfield in the world, but I can`t see one of those midfielders that has an ounce of creativity, well unless playing the long ball upto 2 5ft stikers counts 😉

Let`s take a closer look:

Beckham:
Arguably the best crosser of a ball in the world but is past his best. What pace he had is now gone, but he is still probably Englands best midfield player – a scary thought!

Gerrard:
I will get slated for this BUT what on earth is all the fuss about? When was the last time Gerrard had a decent game for England? And since when has Gerrard been on eof the best midfielders in the world. The amount of times he wastes a pass or gives the ball away is laughable, next time you watch England make a note everytime Gerrard gives the ball away, you will be surprised at how often it happens.

Lampard:
Out of the 2 I would start Lampard infront of Gerrard every time, he is much more of an all round midfielder and doesn`t waste the ball as much. However if we come up against a good, or even average team I feel they will be able to exploit his weeknesses, mainly his predictability – get the ball pass it over the top of the defence and hope Owen can catch the ball!

Cole:
Mr Over-rated himself! All tricks and no end product, granted Mourinho has made him into a better player than he was but he still doesn`t have that vision to unlock a defence with a single pass, and he isn`t a left sided midfield player.

The worrying thing for me is that these players honestly believe they are the best in the world, is it their fault for thinking this? I don`t think it is, I blame the media for all of the hype. I think they are so used to hearing how good they are in the papers they are starting to believe the hype.

If you were the Argentina manager (in my opinion the best team in the tournament) how many of the England squad would get in that team? – NONE

England are nothing more than an average football team in the same league as Sweeden, Portugal and the Czech`s. There is no way England can be mentioned in the same breath as Argentina, Brazil, Holland, Spain or dare I say it Germany!

Rant over, feel free to slate me 🙂

The Ten Thousand Dollar Auction Is Back!

Greetings again everyone, I didn`t expect to be making another entry this soon but I thought you would be interested to hear the news!

John Thornhill (Planetsms), creator of the famous “Ten Thousand Dollar Auction” e-Book has just informed me that he has now granted resale rights to this fantastic e-Book. He won`t be promoting this to his own mailing list for at least another 48 hours, so now is your chance to jump on the bandwagon.

In a few weeks eBay will no doubt be flooded with the e-Book so I thought I would let you know about it ASAP so you can cash in 🙂

I`m sure a lot of you already own the e-Book, so if you do, what are you waiting for? – GET SELLING!!

If you aren`t one of the lucky owners yet I have set up a quick payment page where you can purchase the item with resale rights for just $10:

http://www.elpassobooks.co.uk/website/ebook_website/ten_thousand_dollar_auction_ebay.htm

Also whilst I have your attention, how would you like an article on identifying spoof emails for my next newsletter? As always please leave me any comments or suggestions.

Until next time,
Dan

1st Choice Web Host Review – www.1stchoicewebhost.co.uk

People are always asking me who I host all of my sites with, to save me typing out the same email over and over again I am going to be reviewing all of the web hosts that I use!

The 1st host I will be reviewing is 1st Choice Webhost, they are a UK host based in London and are run by a friend of mine called Derek Chambers.

I run 7 alot of my sites, including El Passo Books on 2 of 1st Choice`s 4 servers.

I have been using 1st choice since 2005 and apart from 1 major server problem in the summer of 2005 I have had no noticeable downtime and all of my sites have remained online. This is vital as I run my EW Business Portal delivery script on there, this script needs to be run on a reliable server as it manages all of my e-Book sales via eBay and my website.

The hosting packages come with all of the added extras you are every likely to need including loads of free scripts including blogs, forums, CMS and Ecommerce systems plus many more.

The prices and packages are very realistic and you know exactly what you are getting, there are no hidden T&C`s that will come back to haunt you! Best of all there are no setup charges and all subscriptions are handled by paypal and there are no contracts.

Support is via Phone (a UK phone number where you speak to a person and not a switchboard!) or via the online ticket based system. You can also contact Derek via MSN messenger which I find very helpful if I ever have any questions.

The only negative I can think of is that your accounts are manually set up to prevent abuse. This means that after you have subscribed it could take upto 48 hours for your account to be created, this will vary depending on how busy they are.

Overall I can`t fault 1st choice for the price or service, I have had no problems with them since 2005 and host most of my websites with them. If you are willing to wait a couple of days for your account to be set up then go for 1st choice, you shouldn`t have any problems.

So there`s my review of 1st Choice – www.1stchoicewebhost.co.uk

Now, what`s the overall score I hear you cry, well here is my little system for scoring web hosts:

Price: 8/10
Reliability: 9/10
Support: 8/10
Fetaures: 10/10

Overall: 35/40

P.S. Did I show you the special package put together for my readers? – http://www.1stchoicewebhost.co.uk/elpasso.htm

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