Is it normal to cheat when selling stuff on Ebay - please be honest

[Tryharder]

I have bought loads of things on Ebay but never sold anything. Had a big clearout recently and have quite a number of nice things that I thought I might sell. I mentioned this to a friend and she told me that when she sells stuff, she gets friends with ebay accounts to put in fake bids in order to push up the value. I was a bit shocked and said that's unethicalb but she shrugged and said everyone does it. Do they???? She actually asked me to put in a fake bid for a pushchair she was flogging but i refused on principle!

What happens if you do that and one of your fake bidders inadvertedly ends up buying your item???

So am I being a sanctimonious arse or is this sort of practice the done thing and quite acceptable?

I think that's whats known as "shill" bidding - and is against ebay rules........

no I sell lots of stuff as does dh and I never ask people to bid on it.

no. i have done but now just tend to start things at the minimum price i would be willing to accept for it.

It definitely happens, but it's impossible to push th price too high - no one will bid, so it's only pushing to a certain extent and there is always the chance that the seller will be stuck with the fees and the items.

I don't bother with it, I list to sell, but I do have more than one ebay account.... so I can see that it would be possible if I wanted to... IYSWIM

Must happen, I get alot of second chance offers on things I have stopped bidding on!

I've never done it. It doesn't surprise me that people do but it's pretty out of order. How would you feel if you knew someone had done it to you?

I've been suspicious about something I bought recently, I was bid up £1 by £1 then it reached my max bid of £7.04 and they stopped - it was 2 mins before the end it was obvious that 7.04 was my top bid so they could have won the item for a few pence more. Didn't know what to do though!

I once bought some nappy wraps on ebay and it was me and another bidder. I kept putting in a bid and it kept saying you have been outbid... this went on and on to the point where I was just going higher and higher to the point where i might as well have bought the bloody things on the high street so I stopped bidding. The next day I got a second chance offer from the seller. I looked at the bidder competing against me and it was someone in Israel who had no feedback at all. As if someone in Israel would want to buy nappy wraps in the UK - it was so obviously a scam. I didnt bother to respond to the sellers second chance offer - f*ck off!!!

it just puts me off when people are dishonest. I'd like to sell my stuff to make a bit of cash for christmas hopefully. I might try pricing the item more realistically to start off with rather than at 99p - as misdee indicates.

sorry my last post reads very badly. I think its time i called it a night and went off to bed - DS2 is due a feed any minute now though so might as well wait up for him!

My brother asked me to shill bid for him - I told him to piss off!!

I am really pleased everyone's saying no. Aren't we a decent bunch! My answer's no never too - although I must confess I was only very slightly for one nano-second tempted this weekend as a bidder put in one bid then on the ending day put in another maximum bid and I so wanted to know what it was and I would have loved a bit more for it. However no-one else bid so she won it for her minimum and I'm fine with that

unforunately, I think this happens quite often, although it's against ebay rules.
I'm pretty sure I've come across it a few times. Once it was so obvious I reported the seller to ebay. Their current listings were pulled, but they didn't get banned I don't think.

I have never done it either but have reported a few people who have.

I am always a bit suspicious when people selling high value items on auction manage to sell them for almost exactly the same price every time. Usually, when I have had a little dig they have been up to something - some newbie is there, making a bid within the last half hour but never winning.

Actually this new thing of hiding other bidders names has put a stop to the detective work as you can't check anybody's bidding history. That can't be good.

I did it when I first started on ebay. I was selling off quite a few things and was worried that no-one was bidding. I didn't know then that there tends to be a rush of bidders at the end.
I very obviously shill bidded on everything I was listing abnd promptly got all my listings ended for shill bidding!

I haven't done it since!

How do you know if someone is shill bidding ?
I once bid on an item in the last minutes and had other bids against mine so didn't bother. When i checked who had won it they had only ever got items of the same seller.

i have to admit i ahve doen it in the past for a good reason i felt though, i ahd listed a buggy that i decided i didn;t want to sell but was too close to finishing time to end it, so i got my friend to bid on it a ridiculously high price (it was a bugaboo bee) but she still got outbid at the last minute.
i was actually really upset that she got oputbid and even though i got what was a fantastic price for it, i actually didn;t want to sell but was obliged to or admit i had got someone to big high so it wouldnt sell.

Lilyloo, in the cases I reported there were other bidders with little or no feedback bidding repeatedly on the sellers items without ever winning and also missing out by only a couple of £s.

When I had a look at their feedback pages they were all registered in the same town as the seller. Too much of a coincidence.

i know lady who got two ebay ID and bids and buys on her own auction in the hope someone will outbid. she sells baby stuff buggyes carseats etc... she actually bought from me and the same they collected it listed by her other Id which i found out later.
i think its wrong. whatever the reason they got

I used to be able to check for evidence of suspected shill bidding fairly easily but ebay have changed the rules and you can only get limited information on a rival bidder's pattern of bidding now. I think it actually makes shill bidding less obvious and therefore pushes up final fees for ebay - .

I always ignore second chance offers as I think they are highly suspect as far as shill bidding is concerned.

Thanks for all your comments everyone! Nice to know most people are honest. Anyway, I have listed some of my items for sale on ebay. Am really excited!!!! Already have a couple of watchers and a bid. Have decided to do what a poster suggested above and set higher starting prices for really nice items rather than having them go for 99p or so.

Am not selling baby clothes though. You see some real tat on ebay- can't understand why anyone would want to buy secondhand babygros/vests on ebay when you can nip to Sainsburys/Asda/Tesco/Matalan and get new ones for about the same price in any case.

Anyway, it's midnight, should be in bed catching up on sleep not lurking on mn or checking out my listings on ebay! Night all!

I have sold quite a bit on ebay and have never done this.

I'm often tempted...then I think karma will just come and get me and nothing will ever sell again.
Definitely happens a lot though- I watched a pushchair, identical to one I was selling, go for over 100 euro, and mine- which from the photo was clearly much newer, went for 9!

No, no, no this makes me so cross. Ebay really only works if people are honest and it is a shame that over the past few years it has become a magnet for scammers.

Never shilled, never will.

i tend to check sellers current/previous auctions and look for suspicious bididng patterns - the classic is when all a sellers items have numerous bids (in clothes this just isn't a typical pattern, most items will get 2 or 3 bids, often at the last minute, not 15 over the period of several days). when you look at the bid history there will be one bidder who repeatedly goes in at (say) £5 increments trying to test out another bidders maximum. they can tell from the next required bid whether they've reached that max or not and if they do end up with the highest bid they can retract it.

i won't buy at all from these sellers unless it's a unique (e.g. vintage) item that won't come up again. this is why i almost always id at the last minute and bid my maximum - so it can't be gradually shilled up by the seller.