Seller of a JVC PC-5 with a Shill Bidder...

[71spud]

Don't buy from this idiot... there is obvious shill bidding going on.... He tries to make it less obvious by using an account with a decent amount of feedback, but it is still happening.

It started here as a $700 BIN/OBO....

[ebay]221413460991[/ebay]

But he got one declined offer... so he cancelled it because of an "error" in the listing.

Relisted as an auction, but it didn't bring much, and is marked as "sold"...

[ebay]221416035930[/ebay]

Looking at the bidding history, notice the e***e(130) bidder who pops in from time to time to run the price up...

You can pull a sanitized history on the bidders to see if anything funky is happening. Seems like that bidder e***e(130) does ALOT of bidding on this seller's items... and in all different categories (formal dresses, boots and boom boxes?), and sometimes "wins". Any bets on if Seller #2 is also the same as, or a friend of, Seller #1? Lots of bids for that seller too...

And.. what do you know... the "sold" item is now immediately relisted for a $600 BIN/OBO....

[ebay]321381228882[/ebay]

I hate it when sellers think they can just jack around with the price like that... It is against eBay's rules, but they don't really care.... anything that raises the final value fees is fine with them...

 

[blu_fuz]

How do they think they will get away with it and no one will notice????!!!! Pisses me off too.

 

[71spud]

Way back when all the bidders and buyers IDs for an auction were made public.... and it was much easier to detect. Now sellers think they can hide it when they do this... and for the most part they can. Except when they get too smart for their own good and do things like the seller above. I also had asked him a question on 4/15 about this item so I see he thought it was a good idea to thrown in another bid on the 16th in case his bid on the 14th didn't cover it.

Granted there was a lot of back lot deals when everyone could contact everyone else... other sellers emailing losing bidders offering them items for sale outside of ebay. Not all offers were legit, so I can see why they felt the need to something. But I am sure they can find a way to crack down on shill bidding on their own... it would just cost them A TON of final value fees. And in the end they can fall back on the fact you were "willing to pay" anyway. It is just that is not how auctions work.

 

[frontside5]

"Hey somebody almost bought it for $150. Let's see if they'll take it for 4 times as much."

 

[Ken]

"Hey somebody almost bought it for $150. Let's see if they'll take it for 4 times as much."

It's not worth twice as much, much less four times as much. I didn't spend the time looking closely at it, but I bet it's not even worth $150.00.

Maybe it's time to ask him a question, just for shiats and giggles...

 

[71spud]

Supposedly the only issue it has is the speakers are rotted away. I guess it depends on how much you love the PC-5.... I think a good clean PC-5, functioning deck, both fold down doors present, and good speakers is easily worth a good $300+. But I may be a bit biased.... I have far north of a dozen of them and I have paid between $40 (a total steal) and $900 (came with some rare extras) each. And I would pay $150-$200 for this one, should he ever really sell it, but I think he is probably is looking for $350-$450.

 

[Fatdog]

That's some good detective work, Joel. Much appreciated!