

First eBay seller to be prosecuted for false bidding - callbarney
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/10510086.stm

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jacquesm
On the dutch site marktplaats (a subsidiary of ebay, they bought it because it
was too well entrenched) nonsense bids are pretty much the norm, it's fairly
rare to get a significant bid on something and to see the buyer follow
through.

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pbhjpbhj
There must be issues with weak legal backing and poor registration processes
that lead to this?

In the UK a bid in an auction is a legal agreement to pay the price bid. One
has to register with identifying details in order to receive goods and people
often close auctions to those with no reputation unless they get sufficient
assurance that the person is genuine they are not allowed to bid.

It's pretty trivial to ID most users from IP+ISP records (+ possibly a little
social engineering) and "small claims" in the County Court are it seems up to
£100,000 GBP. That sort of regime appears to make frivolous offers worth
following up for the legally inclined.

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strawberryshake
Can't believe it's taken this long to have a prosecution - it must be done all
the time! £5,000 is a pretty hefty fine though.

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hugh3
Well, he did it multiple times, and on big-ticket items (two Mercedes
minivans). Five thousand quid doesn't sound inappropriately high.

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kwyjibo
I don't see a problem there. He still has to pay the ebay fees and everything,
so he will loose anyway.

And he won't bid on the item himself if he thinks it's an adaquate price.

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hugh3
The problem is that dummy bids by the vendor in an attempt to artificially
drive up the price are against the rules of eBay's auction model. Buyers and
sellers both agree to abide by certain rules, and one of those rules is that
the seller only gets to make one "bid", the reserve, which is secret until
it's reached and known when it's surpassed.

Now, you could equally well have a different auction model, whereby the seller
gets to make as many bids as he likes. But this model would be much less
attractive to buyers, since I know even if I'm the only buyer the seller is
just going to keep increasing the price until he thinks he's got to the
maximum I'm possibly going to spend. So as a buyer I'm much more inclined to
buy on the single-reserve system than on the multiple-seller-bid system.

Dummy bids are a problem as old as auctions themselves, but it's good to see
people being prosecuted when they're caught.

