I find this hard to believe #2

[Antares600]

Wish I was the Seller (

I Think soon I will start buyingall the Fatboys up and Release them omgs a Month. Just to make them more scarce and more Profitable, Baugh just kidding I wouldn't do that, but at these prices it's Tempting.

I'd sell one of my Fatboys if it meant a huge profit. But then I'm an opportunist

 

[Bearded Buckeye]

Something isn't right about this auction

I really, really expect that the razor will be relisted in the near future...it just doesn't make sense!

My suspicions fall in line with your sniping software theory. My guess is that someone, or two people, accidentally got into a digital peeing match that quite obviously ended in a big, big, big puddle.

 

[Joe D]

But, eBay fights very vigilantly against shill bidding. At the very least, it will get your account and your IP address instantly banned, no questions asked. eBay runs software algorithms which look at where the bids are coming from, and analyzes the timing of the bids. ... And like I said before, eBay will find you if you engage in shill bidding, and shill bidding in any auction is a federal crime. Selling a $50 razor for $300 is not worth federal charges, IMHO. QUOTE]

[SIZE=]Uhh, Chamm I could not disagree with you more. I respect your writings on B&B, but I think you are completely mistaken. I have seen tens of cases of blatant shill bids and even reported several... nothing ever happens. If you Google this, some have written blogs about similar experiences, and the consistent lack of eBay intervention. It is not in eBay business interest to aggressively shut this down. There are even "Guides" for how to shill bid. Furthermore, I would to love to see a court filing or legal reference for a single case where shill bidding in a eBay auction resulted in Federal prosecution. If there is one, it would be something like a criminal ring dealing large numbers of counterfeit diamonds or Rolexes, etc.[/SIZ]

 

[chamm]

The only personal experience I had was an associate that I used to work with, who would sell laptops on eBay and set up shill accounts. After three or four laptops, eBay caught on and hit him with the banhammer. They said that they would seek prosecution if he ever tried to register an account with eBay again, but who knows how hollow that threat was. I'm sure it was a strongly worded letter from a lawyer, but they probably just wanted to scare him.

And I'm in total agreement with you; I sincerely doubt anyone would face prosecution unless is was some serious money. I do think that eBay tries to weed out shills in their own best interest. If shilling were that common, people would leave eBay and go elsewhere. There are quite a few stories on the Internet about shill bidding, but eBay processes a huge amount of transactions. Even if a very small percentage of them involved shenanigans, that would still equal a lot of blog posts. Considering how easy and profitable it would be to participate in shill bidding, I would think it would be far more prevalent if eBay wasn't doing something to actively try to stop it. That's not to say it doesn't happen, I'm sure it does. But I don't think it's as easy and as common as some of the aforementioned blog posts claim it is.

Then again, I will concede that it's possible the person I worked with was just really, really lousy at it, and managed to get caught. To be honest, he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you know what I mean. I don't suspect he tried to do anything to conceal his identity. Maybe their algorithms only go after blatant shills. But they did ban him, and they did threaten legal action, although they didn't take any.

 

[Vlamgat]

I think I'm gonna leave my R89 JET untouched and wait for about a year.

 

[alex2363]

But, eBay fights very vigilantly against shill bidding. At the very least, it will get your account and your IP address instantly banned, no questions asked. eBay runs software algorithms which look at where the bids are coming from, and analyzes the timing of the bids. ... And like I said before, eBay will find you if you engage in shill bidding, and shill bidding in any auction is a federal crime. Selling a $50 razor for $300 is not worth federal charges, IMHO. QUOTE]

Uhh, Chamm I could not disagree with you more. I respect your writings on B&B, but I think you are completely mistaken. I have seen tens of cases of blatant shill bids and even reported several... nothing ever happens. If you Google this, some have written blogs about similar experiences, and the consistent lack of eBay intervention. It is not in eBay business interest to aggressively shut this down. There are even "Guides" for how to shill bid. Furthermore, I would to love to see a court filing or legal reference for a single case where shill bidding in a eBay auction resulted in Federal prosecution. If there is one, it would be something like a criminal ring dealing large numbers of counterfeit diamonds or Rolexes, etc.

I agree here. Ebay makes their money with members and really dont care any other things. They do what it takes to keep members not discard them.

 

[Haegar]

I agree here. Ebay makes their money with members and really dont care any other things. They do what it takes to keep members not discard them.

+1
And if the "small fee" is a bit higher according to the higher selling price they are not unhappy either.

 

[chamm]

+1
And if the "small fee" is a bit higher according to the higher selling price they are not unhappy either.

This is true, but if, overall, prices keep going up, people will stop coming. One of the primary drivers to the site is people thinking (hoping) they might get a great deal. eBay wants the money in fees, but more than that, they need to keep us suckers coming back. ;-)

 

[jbradley]

I guess I got took. I traded a Fat Boy in similar shape for a 2011 R41 straight up with a member here a couple of years ago. Oh well, maybe he'll sell it, make a handsome profit, and want his R41 back! LOL

 

[Antares600]

I agree here. Ebay makes their money with members and really dont care any other things. They do what it takes to keep members not discard them.

Good point. Ebay makes about 9% on everything that sells with the exception of automobiles and some other items.

If they seriously cracked down on shill bidding and counterfeit items etc. it would just be more lost money for them.

 

[Haegar]

This is true, but if, overall, prices keep going up, people will stop coming.

Truth is that they don't stop coming. They would have stopped coming already years ago.

Regarding detection of shill bidders by comparing IPs. Switching off and on the modem is enough to get a new dynamic IP, and there are even software solutions that assign a new IP. Also, shill bidders can just be a bunch of friends who help each other. Unless there is a court case running, Internet service providers in most if not all countries will not (= are not allowed to) reveal IP/Time-stamp based identification data of their customers to third parties such as eBay, you or me.

 

[Matlock]

I see that at the moment there are three Fat Boys on eBay for (buy it now) $99.99, $195.00 and $299.95. I bought a Fat Boy in 2008, boxed and in excellent condition, for $51.00 and I was a little unsure if that was a fair price. Oh well.

 

[chamm]

Truth is that they don't stop coming. They would have stopped coming already years ago.

Regarding detection of shill bidders by comparing IPs. Switching off and on the modem is enough to get a new dynamic IP, and there are even software solutions that assign a new IP. Also, shill bidders can just be a bunch of friends who help each other. Unless there is a court case running, Internet service providers in most if not all countries will not (= are not allowed to) reveal IP/Time-stamp based identification data of their customers to third parties such as eBay, you or me.

This is true, but any time you visit a website, they know your IP address, and I'm 100% sure they correlate your IP address to your username. Heck, I'm sure B&B does that. Rebooting your modem might change your address, but it'll still be within the same block allocated to your ISP. And if your were a üb3r l337 h4xx0r, you could use a proxy, or Tor, but ultimately, most people won't go to that effort. (Sometimes I have a tendency to speculate on things I'm not an expert in, but this is the what I do for a living, so I can actually claim to know what I'm talking about for once! )

However, regarding shill buddies or someone who knows what they're doing, you're completely correct. It's not completely preventable, and I really don't know how hard eBay works to keep those miscreants out. I know my coworker got nailed, but I'm sure he wasn't doing any of the stuff above.

 

[duderubble]

Do a search of sold slim listings, they are going for 50 minimum and some as high as 150. It's a madhouse.

 

[mmack66]

So much for the pretty pictures theory that gets bandied about in regards to CFM auctions.

 

[Haegar]

and I'm 100% sure they correlate your IP address to your username.

Why would they? They can't know because there is no way to know, they only can guess. When I turn off my modem, the next second someone else dozens if not hundreds kilometers away may get the IP I was using before, and If I turn on the modem six seconds later I may get an IP from another IP-block from the same provider.

My guess is, that they won't lose their time with detecting shill bids unless they are forced by court/judge to do so.

 

[rajagra]

I've never paid more than I was willing to as a result of shill bidding. (They aren't holding a gun to your head forcing you to bid.)
I have lost the opportunity to bid on rare items because an opportunist has PMed the seller saying "Hey buddy, will you take $30 for that Red Ring/Red dot/Bottom dial/Toggle/whatever?"

I know which practice I think is the more unethical.

Back on topic, the numbers on that "new" fatboy seem to have no paint. Is that normal?

 

[duderubble]

Where 'new' = 'replate' it is.

 

[Haegar]

Back on topic, the numbers on that "new" fatboy seem to have no paint. Is that normal?

To me it seems that the paint is only faded, not completely absent.

 

[chamm]

Why would they? They can't know because there is no way to know, they only can guess. When I turn off my modem, the next second someone else dozens if not hundreds kilometers away may get the IP I was using before, and If I turn on the modem six seconds later I may get an IP from another IP-block from the same provider.

My guess is, that they won't lose their time with detecting shill bids unless they are forced by court/judge to do so.

If we're talking about real, hardcore legal prosecution, you're probably right. It would be expensive for eBay to lawyer up and go after small-time shilling operations. In a purely legal sense, it's difficult to attach a name to an IP address, especially if you need to convince a jury. The RIAA basically gave up on trying to identify Internet users by their IP addresses, because it's very difficult to make a charge stand up in court. The significant difference, though, is that generally people pirating music don't log into a server, as on eBay. When you log in, you're voluntarily giving them your username, which they correlate with the IP address you use to log in. I'm sure that eBay has a record somewhere of each time you log in, and what IP address you log in from. If you want proof, and if you have the ability, try logging in from an IP address on the east coast, then again immediately from one on the west coast. (I've inadvertently done this because of VPN software, and my company has an office in Oakland.) You'll get a an email warning of a suspicious login, and probably have to provide some extra login information. That's proof positive that eBay is tracking your IP address.

Also, eBay doesn't need any type of legal justification to close your account. They don't need poof, and they don't need to convince anyone. Every webserver software I've ever worked with (Apache, IIS, nginx) has the ability to record IP addresses for HTTP requests, and most of them do. I'm sure eBay has their own in-house webserver software, but even the simplest servers record HTTP requests. Combined with cookies on your computer, being able to uniquely identify you is worth a fortune to advertisers. (Ever notice that if you search for something on eBay, ads for related items start showing up on unrelated websites?) To correlate this with a user login would be trivial. What's more, eBay puts a cookie on your computer that maintains the session data even if your IP address changes. True, you could log out, clear your browser cache and cookies, then reboot your modem, but that's a lot of work, and you'd have to do it in between every shill bid. Even doing that, IP addresses are assigned to users using DHCP from a common address block. If I look at my server logs and see a request coming from 50.140.101.47, then a few minutes later, another request for the same product comes from 50.140.16.96, some automated software could guess that it's likely to be coming from the same person. Nothing that could be proven without a court order, of course, but enough to maybe throw up a flag for further investigation. Advertisers do this all the time in every corner of the internet. There are algorithms running on most major webservers that are always trying to identify unique individual people. You would be utterly shocked at the accuracy with which they can identify you, even if you do clear your cookies, reboot your modem, or even log in from a friend's house.

I'm not pointing all this out from a technical standpoint in an attempt to argue with you. I believe you are probably mostly right, and that eBay probably only makes a sincere effort to go after the more flagrant violators. But it's shocking just how much companies like eBay, Google, Microsoft, etc. can know about you by your browsing habits. Most people think they're anonymous because they can get a new IP address from their provider, or because they can clear their cookies. Companies that have a vested interest in knowing who you are are more than capable of bypassing such trivial attempts at evasion. That's not even scratching the surface of what a national intelligence agency is capable of. They take it to an even more unbelievable level. If you don't believe me, try putting up an eBay listing for yellow cake uranium. You'll find out exactly how anonymous you are when it comes to matters of international security. (Of course I'm kidding. Not only would that violate eBay's Terms of Service, but men in suits would show up at your house in short order. It's pretty unlikely that there would be a positive outcome from this.)