Introduction: Detecting Shill Bidding on EBay (2024)

So the other day I was bidding on an item on eBay. For the majority of the auction I was winning at about $1.00. Yay me! About an hour before the end of the auction I got a notice that I had been out bid. No big problem, I didn't want to bid any higher on the item so that was that.

Or so I thought! When I checked my eBay account later on I found that I had won the item at my maximum bid. Not thinking anything of it at the time I paid the vendor. But something niggled at me. I was sure I had been out bid. Looking through my email spam folder I found an email from eBay that the bid had been retracted, something I didn't know you could do.

I checked the bidding history of the sale and found that yes several bids were made and then retracted making me the highest bidder. I checked some of the sellers other sale items and saw the same bidder had done the same on another auction from this seller.

I then checked the bidders bid history and in the last 30 days 100% of their bids were on items for that seller and 100% were retracted.

Not liking to deal with fraudulent practices I contacted the seller to cancel the sale because I suspect fraudulent bidding. I also reported the sellers other auction that had fraudulent bidding and contacted eBay about the issue.Yes I won the auction at my maximum bid but I should have genuinely won it at $1.00 unless a genuine bidder out bid me, knowing this would have ruined my enjoyment of the item.

I decided to write this article to assist others in how to find out if they have been cheated.

Shill bidding is when a seller uses a separate account, be it one of their own, a friend or a family members or they ask someone to bid on their auction to artificially raise the price of the auction. In this case the bids were placed and then retracted once they had reached my maximum bid level.

Shill bidding is against eBay's policies and illegal in many places.

Here is a link to eBay's shill bidding policy http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/seller-shill-bidding.html

EBay keeps records of everything it seems, and this makes it pretty simple to find out if you have been cheated.

The first step is to go to the listing of the item. Next the the "Winning bid" (see picture) there is a link that shows you the bids made on the auction.

Clicking on the link will bring you to the Bid History page for that listing. This page shows you A) All the bids made in that auction. And B) any bids that were retracted. (see picture)

Clicking on the name of the bidder who retracted the bid t***s in this case will take you to their bidding history.

This page shows the bidders bidding history in the last 30 days.

In this case the bidder made 6 bids on 4 items in the last 30 days with 3 bid retractions (6 in the last 6 months) the really suspicious part is the fact that 100% of the bids were made to the same seller.

It was this information that led me to contact the seller to request the sale be cancelled and to get a refund, as well as contacting eBay themselves.

If the auction is still running you can report it using the Report Item link on the right hand side of the listing page.