PhilipCohen
Registered
- 22 Jul 2008
- 1
- 0
In Australia, the UK, Ireland and the Philippines, eBay has obscured auction bidding to the point that genuine bidders have got absolutely no chance of detecting and thereby protecting themselves from ﾂ"shillﾂ" bidding (a criminal offence in most civilized countries) by unethical vendors.
Notwithstanding eBay's statements to the contrary, this application of absolute anonymity (ie, Bidder 1, Bidder 2, etc) by eBay on these sites serves absolutely no purpose other than to deceive consumers by making even any otherwise blatantly obvious shill bidding undetectable; and the same criticism has always been applicable to eBay's other shill bidders' facility, ﾂ"User ID kept privateﾂ".
My concern then is not so much with the effectively bidder-specific anonymity (ﾂ"a***b
ﾂ") now in use in the US and elsewhere (and which still allows genuine bidders some opportunity to watch for suspicious patterns of bidding on a seller's other auctions) but with the absolute anonymity (ﾂ"Bidder Nﾂ") in use in Australia, the UK, Ireland and the Philippines.
Again, notwithstanding eBay's various pronouncements about shill bidding being banned on eBay, eBay is now, on these sites, effectively (and now knowingly) ﾂ"aiding and abettingﾂ" such shill bidders to defraud consumers. ﾂ…
For those of you with a longer attention span, a lengthy critical analysis of this matter appears on the Online Auction News Forum at auctionbytes.com under the title "Absolute anonymity of bidding: help bring eBay to heel" (seeing as i do not have enough posts yet to add third party URLs).
I apologise in advance for the length of this ﾂ"rantﾂ". Needless to say eBay would not tolerate it on their discussion forums and I have spent time on eBay's ﾂ"naughty chairﾂ" for posting links to it.
If you are an unethical shill-bidding seller or a buyer who is not concerned that on the above-mentioned national sites eBay is effectively ﾂ"aiding and abettingﾂ" such shill-bidding sellers to cheat you, read no further.
Notwithstanding eBay's statements to the contrary, this application of absolute anonymity (ie, Bidder 1, Bidder 2, etc) by eBay on these sites serves absolutely no purpose other than to deceive consumers by making even any otherwise blatantly obvious shill bidding undetectable; and the same criticism has always been applicable to eBay's other shill bidders' facility, ﾂ"User ID kept privateﾂ".
My concern then is not so much with the effectively bidder-specific anonymity (ﾂ"a***b
ﾂ") now in use in the US and elsewhere (and which still allows genuine bidders some opportunity to watch for suspicious patterns of bidding on a seller's other auctions) but with the absolute anonymity (ﾂ"Bidder Nﾂ") in use in Australia, the UK, Ireland and the Philippines.Again, notwithstanding eBay's various pronouncements about shill bidding being banned on eBay, eBay is now, on these sites, effectively (and now knowingly) ﾂ"aiding and abettingﾂ" such shill bidders to defraud consumers. ﾂ…
For those of you with a longer attention span, a lengthy critical analysis of this matter appears on the Online Auction News Forum at auctionbytes.com under the title "Absolute anonymity of bidding: help bring eBay to heel" (seeing as i do not have enough posts yet to add third party URLs).
I apologise in advance for the length of this ﾂ"rantﾂ". Needless to say eBay would not tolerate it on their discussion forums and I have spent time on eBay's ﾂ"naughty chairﾂ" for posting links to it.
If you are an unethical shill-bidding seller or a buyer who is not concerned that on the above-mentioned national sites eBay is effectively ﾂ"aiding and abettingﾂ" such shill-bidding sellers to cheat you, read no further.
