Despicable You – The Deceptive Tactic of Auction Bidding Up

It’s fair to say the evolution of online market places such as EBay, have done their bit to increase the availability of all sorts of items for sale to a huge audience, which prior to these auction sites, may never have had the opportunity to purchase such items. Unless of course they were local to the sellers, had certain connections or the items went on sale in a National Auction House.  

Of course EBay features many collectable items from toys, trading cards, signed memorabilia and thankfully for us Grogg Bloggers, the wonderful Groggs themselves. This all sounds great I hear you say… what could be better than buyers all over the world being afforded an opportunity to purchase these Welsh treats from the comfort of their own home, the opportunity to own a rare piece, one they missed out on or of course to grab themselves a Groggy bargain?

Well I agree on the surface it is superb, I live outside of Wales and would probably only ever be able to purchase Groggs via the official website or potentially through some of my collector friends on some of the social media sites if it wasn’t for EBay. I have bought and sold on EBay in the past and have to say my experiences have usually been fine. However, there is one deceptive, despicable and downright fraudulent activity which is creeping into the EBay markets and that is the practice of “Bidding Up” or Shill bidding.

The practice of bidding up involves the seller using another EBay account to bid on their own items increasing the price that the genuine bidders end up paying and of course pushing up the overall cost of Groggs (and other items) on the second hand market, due to the perception they are worth more than they actually are.

As collectors we often review sites such as EBay to hunt down that elusive Grogg we are missing from our collections. As a result it is common to see the same items relisted week after week, even after in some case the appeared to have sold, this is usually a clear indicator that the item has been bid up. In such circumstances where an item has sold in the auction but then is relisted almost immediately or shortly after the end of the auction it is likely that the seller has bid up the item to such a high price the genuine bidder is no longer in contention to win the item and the fraudulent seller actually ends up winning the item themselves. There are a few reasons they may have done this, one to simply push up the price or secondly to see what the highest price the genuine bidders would actually pay, this way they can relist the item with a high starting price matching the previous genuine highest bid.

So what is the solution? Stop buying on EBay? Of course this should not be the case, there are a lot of genuine buyers on sites such as this which will not undertake any kind of fraudulent activities to sell their own items. Highly collectable items such as Groggs will reach their full potential without the need to intervene, true collectors know what the true value is and at the end of the day you only need two people who really want the item for it to reach its full potential. Recently a rare Grogg sold on EBay for in excess of £5000, a record in terms of Grogg sales but it was something which two collectors really wanted and they were prepared to pay over and above for it.

On the flip side we have recently seen a seller list a large amount of Groggs, all of which appeared to have sold for a fair price, however just minutes after the auction ending a large amount of the items were relisted, this time at a significantly higher price than they had previously sold for, a clear indicator of some form of bidding up.

So how can you avoid being the victim of bidding up or shilling? EBay user Paw19670 offers the following advice:

Check out your seller's feedback thouroughly before you bid! Are there a disprportionate amount of "not a registered user" in their feedback profile? Is there a disproportionate amount of "0" and "1" feedback users in their feedback profile, with suspicious dates? For instance, make sure feedback is not being exchanged just a few hours after the auction ends.

Check out the bidding history of your seller. Are they placing bids exclusively on other seller's items? If they are shilling for another user ID, the chances are someone is shilling for them as well.

Snipe your bids! The closer to the end of the auction that you place your bid, the less likely it is that you are likely to be shilled. This of course only helps to reduce the risk of being shilled after you place your bid and does not guarantee that the auction hasn't already been tampered with.

Check the bid histories of ALL the bidders on the auction. Simply view the "Bid History" of the auction in question and although the bidder IDs will be encrypted you will be able to see patterns in the same encrypted user IDs bidding on similar items. Are any of the bidders bidding exclusively on your seller's auctions? This is perhaps the most important step to avoid shill bidding - always check the bid histories of any auction before you bid.

For more information on this subject area and for the potential consequences for those who practice it check out this article Ebay-seller-faces-fine-bidding-items-raise-prices

If you are in any doubt as to how reputable the seller is, I would probably suggest avoiding the seller altogether. Utilise social media pages such as The Jolly Groggers , Grogg Appreciation Group and The Grogg Blog to liaise with fellow collectors, they may have knowledge of the EBay users which may help you in your decision as to whether to bid or not. Most importantly Caveat Emptor "Buyer Beware".