eBay seller fined in court for bidding against himself to rig online auctions

Jul 6 2010 Dave Higgens

A CROOKED eBay seller who rigged his own auctions has been fined £3500 and given 250 hours community service.
Paul Barrett is the first person in Britain to land in court for putting goods on eBay then bidding on them himself to drive up their prices. He was also hit with a costs bill of nearly £1500.
Judge Peter Benson told the fraudster: "It is an obviously dishonest practice, whichever way one looks at it."
He added that Barrett's lack of a record for dishonesty had saved him from going to jail.
Married dad-of-one Barrett, 39, used eBay to sell lots including two Mercedes vehicles, a Land Rover, a pie and pasty warmer, three mobile phones and a digital camera.
Bradford Crown Court heard he had two eBay user names - "paulthebusman" and "shanconpaul". He would set up auctions using one name and bid in them using the other. If he ended up making the winning bid, he would leave feedback on the site praising himself. Harvey Murray, prosecuting, told the court that the pie and pasty warmer had been set to sell on eBay for £74. But Barrett placed five bids himself just before the sale closed and it eventually sold for £127.
Trading Standards began investigating Barrett after an eBay customer complained he had been sold a "clocked" minibus. The bus had been advertised with a mileage of 55,000 but had actually done 132,000.
Officers looked into Barrett's eBay deals and discovered the "shill" bidding. Both his user names were traced to the same computer.

The full story here

My Opinion
I just love this story, as you can see ebay has no involvement in catching the offender, who was ripping off those poor customers. The customers concerned did not even know that they had been ripped off, as ebay had done so much to hide the fact, possibly because it would interfere with what equates to a protection racket, where sellers have to buy their own goods using alias accounts to clean up their feedback as they struggle to live up to the unrealistic expectations of ebays feedback system. Which all means more money for ebay.

The ebay response
An eBay spokeswoman said the site used the latest technology to track down "shill" bidders. She added: "We are extremely pleased with Paul Barrett's sentence."
So no mention of why they did not catch this one then?and he was not using any of the things that others have said you need to get past ebays "brilliant security" LOL.

Shill bidding is a common part of ebay, along with other dubious practices  like attacking anyone that dares to compete or to use alias accounts to clean up the feedback. All ebay have ever done to stop it was to make it easier and to offer more encouragement to those sellers that are willing to pay the extra fees.

Take some advice and no matter if you are buyer or seller move to ebid.net and tell those that you buy from or sell to to do the same. Eventually ebay will get the message and go away to the tax collector in the sky.

Always wanting to end on a happy note. I know of several sellers that are using aliases to clean up their accounts attack other sellers and more than likely shill bid their customers and before there was nothing you could do about it, as we all know ebay did nothing about it when you did. But now you can hand that information over to Trading Standards http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/ and let them deal with it.

I know you may feel you don't care about this, as you have moved on from ebay but you are wrong, as this is going to damage all online auction sales where ever you go, as looking at some of the responses on forums and other places over this matter, then people seemed to accept it as the norm, as if it were something we all knew was happening and accepted it. What happens to online sales if that spills outside of ebay and the buyers feel that is the norm?

One last point I thought was funny is that auctions on ebay were based on the same system as auctions in the UK with the buyer beware system, so that if you bought it then it was yours with no returns. Ebay removed that system and destroyed their auction business in doing so and now added the "buyer beware" term to the general use  of ebay. Beware of those sellers second accounts.

Feb 18-25th 2008: Worldwide Ebay Strike

Here we Go Again?

I have just skipped that article that you can find if you do a google search, as I personally think boycotting ebay is a waste of your time. If you want to hurt ebay and those die hard sellers that act as if ebay can do no wrong, and it is all your fault then the answer is obvious. STOP PAYING THEM YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY AS BUYER OR SELLER TOTALLY AND FOR EVER. Easy as that. BUY and SELL somewhere else and if you see something you want and it is only available on ebay then say to the user "If you sold on ebid.net where I buy and sell then I would have bought that off you for a better price than you are going to get on here and it could have cost you nothing to sell it to me." But what do I know?

So here is an article that explains how some are looking at the changes and how little ebay management think of you and a little more from me at the bottom, as I can't resist a chance to rant.

Is eBay facing seller revolt?

 eBay's latest move, some of the auction site's devotees say, is straight out of the Ministry of Truth's playbook.

 

The company made an announcement last week about lowering the listing fees for items--even though, in many cases, final value fees will be raised. The company's discussion forums simmered with outrage over the executive decision, and frustration over the lack of other options for auction-style e-commerce.
"What a joke," commented one person on the eBay Seller Central forum, asking for advice about transferring the items from an eBay "store" to another auction site. Another suggested putting together an April Fool's Day protest.
eBay representatives say that these opinions come from the minority. "A lot of the sellers that we're talking to are very, very happy with these changes," said Todd Lutwak, eBay's senior director of seller experience. He said it gives a better array of options for different kinds of sellers. "What we've done with these price changes is, we've segmented the seller population and then we've provided those segments with what we feel are better options to meet their needs."
Here's the math: Individual eBay items with a starting price of 99 cents or less no longer have a listing fee, and if they don't sell, the seller pays nothing; but if they do sell, the final value fee is 9 percent with a maximum of US$50. Previously, it had been 8.75 percent for the first US$25, and 3.75 percent after that. For more serious eBay sellers who purchase subscriptions to run "stores", final value fees have been altered so that they start at a lower threshold, but in some cases can ultimately get higher. eBay piloted these changes in some European markets starting in 2008 (with success, representatives say), and later added some U.S.-based beta testers whom it's showcased in a new promotional site explaining it all, called "The Best Place To Sell".
"People who have store subscriptions, who sell thousands of items a month, are being advantaged," explained Alan Lewis, who worked at eBay as a product manager for five years and now serves as the platform manager for Auctiva, a site that makes tools for eBay sellers. "(This) continues the direction that they've been going for the past couple years, which is catering more and more to large sellers...It's something that makes sense for eBay. They just have to deal with the consequences. If they are bringing on larger sellers, there will be consequences for smaller sellers."
An eBay pundit who goes by the handle "AuctionWally" wrote a blog post in which he speculated that the fee changes "will benefit the savvy consumer of collectibles, antique and unique items as this plan brings a lot more product to the marketplace with low starting bids," and that "this stuff can be more like reading tea leaves than a flow chart, but it looks pretty good from an auction seller's perspective, and just as nice for most store sellers." Still, many of Wally's own commenters disagreed with him--some with extremely strong language.
Granted, when a company makes a product change announcement, it's the ticked-off ones who are the most vocal. But those dissatisfied sellers sure want to be heard.
"The lower announced listing fee decreases are absurdly trivial to the extreme, and will cause eBay to become more cluttered than ever with overpriced, worthless stuff that people will put purely on speculation that some fool will bite," an Alexandria, Virginia-based antiques dealer related to CNET in an e-mail. "I have been selling on eBay since 1997 and I know eBay like the back of my hand. It is a true love-hate relationship."
Any community site--particularly one where members may be making a profit by participating in that community--is sure to experience some dissent when changes are made. For eBay, however, the uproar from some sellers about this week's fee changes was more vociferous than usual. It amounted to Orwellian doublespeak, some claimed; and the "Best Place To Sell" microsite was little more than propaganda.
"Maybe eBay thinks a simple and transparent 'spin' that they are trying to offer will work--dropping their listing fees, which are small, and then upping the final sale fees from 3.5 percent to 9 percent--and just slip by all their sellers," said Northville, Mich.-based eBay seller Bill Wever, who says he has used the site for over a decade and owned eBay stock since its initial public offering in 1998, in an e-mail to ZDNet Asia's sister site CNET.
"After reading (this week's) announcement, I will be expanding my presence on other sites and will be significantly reducing my presence on eBay," another seller e-mailed to CNET on the same day the fee changes were announced. "It never ceases to amaze me that eBay management seems to dismiss or disregard how constant change negatively affects their fee-paying sellers. Last year, there were two major change announcements. This year there will be three."
At the center of the mayhem, really, is a problem that eBay has had a rough time with in recent years: It obviously wants to make a profit. That profit comes from commission fees, and those commission fees are biggest coming from the sales of relatively expensive goods by well-established sellers--many of whom pay a subscription to operate "stores". Hiking up listing fees has had a noticeable impact on eBay's quarterly earnings in the past.
"All the things that they've done in the past couple years have been to bring more large sellers onto the site and bring them the economic incentives to do so, and they really haven't done anything for small sellers," said Alan Lewis of Auctiva, which targets smaller-scale sellers.
And eBay has been feeling the pressure for years. It made some arguably poor acquisition choices in the past half-decade that ultimately resulted in the selling off of properties like Skype and StumbleUpon, all of which dealt a blow to shareholder confidence. Plus, online auctions are no longer the hub of deals that they used to be: An increasingly diverse cornucopia of e-commerce innovations has emerged in recent years, from handmade-goods emporium Etsy to fire-sale deal-a-day outlets like Woot and Gilt.
But the flip side of this is that eBay still has a lock on auctions. It smoked out much of its would-be competition years ago, and many of its sellers deal in niches that are better off operating as auctions rather than flat-fee sales that could be handled over Amazon or Craigslist. eBay can make many of these controversial descisions and rest assured that it still owns the market.
"All of us have been hoping for someone else, perhaps Google or Amazon, to step in and provide true competition, but that has not happened," said the antiques dealer from Alexandria. "It would require a huge investment to do a proper worldwide advertising campaign to get something going."
eBay admits that the most recent changes will make the auction process more expensive for some sellers, but stands by its decision.
"There are cases in which this new fee structure is actually more expensive than what they were paying before," admitted eBay's Lutwak, "but the fact is, what (the sellers) asked us for is they want the lower risk associated with lower fees on the front end, and that they were willing to pay the final fees."
eBay hopes to extend an olive branch in the form of new buyer-protection coverage that it says will make buyers more comfortable spending money on eBay, particularly in large amounts--and that sellers will make more money as a result. "Coupling these two messages not only shows that we're making some adjustments to the fee structure but that we're also making major investments as a company to ensure that our customers are coming back more," said Kellie Cobaugh, manager of the buyer protection program.

Article from here

ME AGAIN

More messing around, more increases and with more options to scam sellers for bad buyers. This is even more reason for users not to be there, as ebay no longer want those users that are both buyer and seller, as you read above from Kellie Cobaugh, manager of the buyer protection program.who says "we're also making major investments as a company to ensure that our customers are coming back more" They are talking about their customers who are now only buyers not the normal users on ebay that both buy and sell. I still can't see what they view those users that also sell as?

Great Really Great!

If you want to look through it and see what they are talking about then check here on ebay. If you can make sense of it when you consider the enforced free shipping and the fact that ebay is no longer a place you are guaranteed a sale of anything other than the start price if you get a sale at all then maybe you can let me know.


Not sure if there is going to be another boycott, I think most sellers have giving up caring enough to boycott ebay, and most will just float off to the alternatives like ebid.net where they really do offer free listing and those that should not stay and fight to stay will just fade away and stop selling as it becomes impossible to make a profit.


The normal suspects on PSU are voicing their opinion, as everyone expected them to, and I really do wonder how some can ignore the fact that there are very few buyers on ebay. Most users are both buyer and seller, so even if the changes ebay make do not effect their sales directly, they will eventually be effected by the loss of customers, that I have still not seen ebay do anything worthwhile to replace.

But if you are tired of ebays changes and attempts to get rid of you, then maybe this is a good time to jump ship completely and start setting up your stores on places like ebid.net, as the sellers that fight to stay with ebay will eventually find themselves with nothing.

But as always I will wish you good luck for the future.

I will see you back on ebid.net soon, as I am busy researching some marketing stuff with Social Networking like FaceBook that is taking up a lot more time than I had hoped, and looking at some new product lines that I may consider selling.

The shut down of hotandvintage.com

I created www.hotandvintage.com for me and my wife, in a hope to draw her away from the mad house that has become ebay and what I could see it becoming, which turned out to be warranted in this case.

The problem is, as with the old saying "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink" she struggled to see beyond the short term answer of ebay, as are a lot of sellers still hanging onto ebay are fighting to stay on ebay.
And although the customers were building and the sales were starting to flow regularly I think I agreed that we both preferred the auction format.

I am still looking at ways to increase sales off ebay, but now it will have to be through using the alternatives, as I can only see ebay getting worse and the more sellers stay on there the more damaging it will be to the auction used vintage market.

We are still trading to a small extent here and there but nothing major, as at the moment it feels like ebay is going to get their way, and the auctions will eventually be faded out, but not fast enough to let any competition get a hold on the market. So it is a case of just waiting until the small profit that is left on their is gone and we give up, as I am just so tired of the animals, that are the new ebay buyers, and the ebay mess that is allowing it to get like this.
The market is made for BIN sellers and unless you are willing to step into that method, it, in my opinion, is time to search out an alternative method of making a living.

As to our website customers, sorry for the inconvenience and I hope we see you soon on the alternatives.

Ebay showing again how little they understand selling

'Misleading' eBay prices ad banned

The advertising watchdog has banned eBay from boasting its prices are a quarter cheaper than those in high street shops.

The ASA has banned eBay from claiming it is a quarter cheaper than high street shops

A poster advertising the popular online marketplace read: "Guess what? 25% cheaper than the high street on brand new items."

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint that the ad was misleading because it did not make the basis of the comparison - carried out for eBay by a third party company - clear enough.

eBay said that for each of 288 new products, the average price from recent eBay sales - including postal charges - were compared with an average of prices in stores such as Debenhams and John Lewis.

However readers, the ASA said, would take the poster to be an absolute claim that eBay was cheaper than all main high street stores for all new items, although there was not enough evidence to support this.

The rest of the story can be found here

Ebay are constantly telling sellers that use ebay what they can and can't do, yet they are struggling with simple tasks like advertising.

But for those that are selling through ebay auctions, I would really consider what type of customer they are trying to bring onto ebay.

Those that are selling BIN and enjoying those discounts that ebay are giving them, I am sure you now see what you are supposed to be doing with them. But I hope you realise if ebay is not your only selling venue, and that if they do get you to reduce your prices then you may as well kiss your other sales venues goodbye, as you are working for ebay to close down your other venues, and we all know ebay can be a jealous mistress.

And if you follow the link to the ebay FAQ you will see the new logo that ebay are bringing out, all for those that sell their items with free shipping and for good value, as shown in the image. You think I would be wrong to think the good value, may be 25% off?

I don't know, it really is starting to look like an ebay seller has to be like one of those monks, that wack themselves with whips, as you have to see the pain coming your way, whatever way you sell.

Ebay making more of a mess for sellers

Some have classed this as the long awaited updates, or changes. Personally I think it is just more evidence that the lunatics are running the asylum.

So what are these changes?


More of the same sort of misunderstanding who their customers are, as they try to give the "sellers customers" more, which I assume their thinking is, if they just give the buyer everything for free, then they will have to start using ebay.
They are still struggling with the concept that it is the seller they have to keep happy.
Make it easy and safe for the honest seller, and ebay will grow. If they keep following this insanity, then ebay will continue to shrink, and these changes are a long way from any changes in the right direction for the honest seller.

You can find the changes in this FAQ here for US or here for UK but be careful of the ebay wording most of it is in bong speak, as in pass me the bong dude.

A few new pages that your customers will not use and a new super bargain logo, but as the new pages are using best match and also have to be selected during a search then who will use them, so we may as well forget they exist.

Here is ebays view on what they are doing

So that eBay remains a thriving marketplace we need a close partnership with sellers like you so that we all give buyers the experience they expect. We’re continuing to invest in driving traffic and buyer loyalty, and we need your help to make buyers happy and keep them coming back to you.

For our part, we’re also taking steps to make it easier and more profitable for you to sell - including consolidating the changes that impact your business and giving you plenty of lead time to adapt.

These updates are scheduled to take place the week of 15th June 2009 and you have to laugh or you would cry.

The new Smart FAQ

What are Smart FAQs? This is a new free feature that draws on live information from your listings to answer the top 20 buyer questions before buyers reach you through the "Ask a question" or "Contact seller" links.

So maybe the customer is not going to get through to you at all. You really think the ebay buyer is going to buy that? They really do not know the ebay buyer.

And there goes a way to really kill off any new customers if you look at number three

Direct buyers to another version of the Smart FAQ page from which only existing customers (users who have already made a purchase from you) can click "Contact seller" from the FAQ page to send an email directly to you. This option is not recommended unless it's absolutely necessary for your business operations. Removing the ability for buyers to contact you directly can cost you sales and have a negative impact on Detailed Seller Ratings.
A question to that last line, so why add it if it is not recommended and could even impact a sellers detailed seller rating. You can just hear the yells in their office of "pass over the bong before I start on these ebay changes."

How ever for those of you setting up new accounts with a thousand names, this one may be a good one to stop the ebay messages, and force the buyers to contact your email, which you add to the listing. Maybe ebay created this with you in mind, as it saves you having to log in to ebay.
Also useful for those that wish to have info to their off ebay venues in their emails.
But what good does it do ebay or any normal seller that just wishes to sell on ebay.

Tracking in the MY ebay section is useful if they bother to tell the buyers that it is there this time, or if it is clearly visible. They have not had a good record of informing buyers of this sort of thing in the past.

The next in the list is Return Policy and handling times.

This is another of those pointless exercises on ebay, but for what it is worth, you basically have to make sure you select either you do accept returns or you don't accept returns, which if you use Auctiva to list, it is already forcing the selection, so not really a problem.
Why is it pointless? Due to the fact that any return policy you have is overridden by paypal, and soon will be overridden by ebay.

More postage mess coming

Now we all understand handling time but ebay have decided to step over the line again, and make the seller responsible for not just the handling time but also the time it takes your postal service to deliver the item, as you can see here.

How will delivery estimates be calculated? We calculate estimated delivery time based on your specified handling time and the estimated times provided to us by the shipping service. Delivery estimates are calculated as a range of days, not a specific date.

Now there is a reason I have pointed this out, as we skip the next few items in their list, as they have little to do with me and if you care, then go read it. But the next important part, as far as I'm concerned is the new eBay Resolution process.

It seems ebay are struggling to control those with merchant accounts or those taking other payment methods, throughout the resolution process, as if the person does not use paypal, then there is little ebay can do about any problem at the moment.
So what it seems they have decided to do is move the resolution process, that will include any payment made by the seller to ebay, rather than allowing paypal to deal with it.

There are several things you need to worry about with this, as ebay seem to be under the same impression that they have been under for some time, which is "buyer good, seller bad" using my best Frankenstein monster impression, as I am sure ebay employees must have to chant every morning, as they sit at their keyboards, possibly using their best Frankenstein monster impression..

When can buyers contact eBay about a transaction? eBay Customer Support will be available for buyers at any time to answer transaction questions. In many cases, this will save time for sellers, because our Customer Support agents can answer basic questions that otherwise would have gone to the seller.

Seems a step toward taking the seller out of the loop, or they are board, as sellers are no longer wasting their time contacting customer support.

I have found one positive so far though, but not really

What if the buyer never paid for the item? Can they still call eBay with a dispute? Buyers are welcome to contact eBay for any reason. However, eBay will not permit claims when the buyer has not paid the seller.

At least that will stop those NPBs from playing their retaliation game on sellers, although how will ebay know if they have paid for an item or not, unless you only accept paypal payments.

That problem seems to be a theme with ebay and these changes, ebay could be paying back a customer who has not actually paid for an item, and then taking the money from you.

This one should also panic all those trading on ebay

Would eBay ever settle a case with a buyer without first contacting the seller? eBay may decide to refund the buyer before contacting the seller, but in all cases the seller will have five business days to respond to a claim. If a seller successfully settles the claim and the buyer had already been refunded, eBay will absorb the cost of the refund.

Is it me or is this just a little too much of that bong talk, as this really does not make sense, unless they already have the system set up to forget to inform the seller, when they feel like it.

Now another that you should worry about, even though it is worded oddly.

What if the item is still in transit when the buyer contacts us?
If the item is still in transit, eBay will consider the delivery estimate in the listing. If tracking indicates that the item should arrive within the delivery estimate plus a reasonable amount of additional time (3 days in most cases), the buyer will be told to wait and the seller will not be held accountable. If tracking indicates that the item will arrive outside this timeframe or is lost in transit, the seller may be held accountable. The same proof of delivery criteria apply to cross-border transactions.

In other words if the post office delay the delivery of your item, then the buyer will be refunded, and you will have a strike on your account, if your postal service loose the parcel and you have a customer with the brains of a nat, then you end up with a strike.
Also added from a pink on the ebay board, if the money is refunded and the item turns up, ebay will not request payment until the buyer contacts ebay to let them know that they have the item. And how many of the new breed ebay buyers are going to bother doing that.

So the basics of the above are if there is anything in the pipeline that will delay your postal service, such as bad weather, strike action, or anything else, then stop selling, as you are going to be blamed for their delays, as with the last UK postal strike.

For those that like that free stuff there is probably a few good ways to use this. One off the top of my head is do not be in when the item is to be delivered, do not request redelivery until the third day and try get your postal service to deliver on the fifth day. Or how about requesting all your packages go to your local post office or PO box, and they are not marked as collected until you pick them up. If the seller does not deliver to a PO Box, then just pay the small fee to your postal service to have your mail forwarded to a PO BOX.

Or the easy one, if they really do plan on acting like paypal, make sure your payment is an e-cheque, or take your time paying for the item, how much you betting that ebay are not going to look at when the item was paid for.

One good thing I have noticed is this

If a seller successfully appeals a dispute will Buyer Satisfaction Ratings be affected? When eBay decides a seller is not at fault for a dispute, the seller's Buyer Satisfaction Rating will not be impacted.

Which is better than the current system, where a seller is guilty until proven innocent.

And this one would be funny if it was not so damaging to sellers.

What can sellers do to protect themselves from buyer abuse? Sellers should report buyers who are abusive, either by contacting eBay Customer Support or by following eBay's process for reporting inappropriate behaviour.

We all know to take that with a pinch of salt, ebay will listen to what we say, yeah right and I am out hunting flying pigs in the morning, with a pea shooter.

For the Ebay UK there are a few changes that I think are basically ebay pushing that free postage scam they are trying to push on your customers. So check through them as they are going to force free shipping in several categories.
And if anyone from ebay is reading this, please look in my link section there is a link to a website called free shipping org (http://www.freeshipping.org/) Nip onto that site and see how the professionals offer free shipping, before you run your sellers into the ground.


The rest is basically the move of shipping labels to ebay, rather than having to use paypal, as you do now.

So what do I think of all this?

A lot of the changes are part of ebays plan at removing paypal from the complaint procedure, as stated above.

To be honest, the rest is really not that great either, as always with ebay, they just show how little they understand their own market place or any market place, as they make it more dangerous for the seller, who pay their wages.

You really need to start finding alternatives, as I think, ebay has gone so far out of the field, that even if they could work out how to get back, I doubt it will ever be what it used to be, as they are not only destroying the market place that was once ebay, they are also destroying the users that were once proud to be ebayers.

The new breed of buyer and seller is like nothing we have ever had to face from ebay in the past, as they have no pride in ebay, the market place or care for other users. They seem to have brought in a mass of scummy or powerless people that use the person they are dealing with as a punch bag to make up for what they are lacking in face to face confrontations.
Ebay is making their venue a place for the scum now so please lets get gone before they spill out into the other places we use, as something else I have noticed on ebay due to all these changes that the more unscrupulous a seller is then the more successful they are becoming, as they are willing to attack other sellers with no concern, and are very willing to shill bid up the price of their items without worrying about it, if they win it, then they just give themselves five stars and it is one less they have to do later, as that seems to be a normal thing for these sellers.


Most of the other changes are set up for BIN Sellers and they will already know about them.