Watch out for the *** on ebay auctions.

Either Way Its Something Shady Going On With Ebay PERIOD! Call Me Crazy

whats the definition 2 shill bid?

Damn.

NYGIants hit the nail on the head; thats exactly what they are doing. But of course; hes also right in that people will be shilling more with the asterik'dnames.

I stay away from those auctions. It has to be something going on. How come there are always only 2 or 3 asterisks in their name? How come you never see usernames with 8 or more characters bidding.

Nah..bro, that's not shill bidding, it just to protect the bidder from other seller. In some cases, there's some other seller who contact the highestbidder and offering their own stuffs, that's not only hurt the ebay overall but the original seller as well. Besides those auctions ended at prettydecent/market price but don't get me wrong tho', shill bidding do exist so just be careful and knowing the market price sometimes helps.

Shouldn't eBay be worried about protecting the WINNER's identity and not the bidders? It's comical to me that they are defending this whole"protecting the bidders" crap, when it's clear to me that they are lining their pockets even more.

It's EASY to shill bid now. Every time that dollar amount goes up, eBay gets an even BIGGER cut of the paycheck. That answers the original post-startersquestion as to why you can't get a response and why they don't think it's wrong. Why would they stop this? Sorry to say, but eBay loves shillbidders. It only increases their profits off the auctions.

I just find it funny that someone can't tell that I bid and LOST an auction for $1000, but if I bid and WIN, everyone can view my full eBay name.

Yeah, thanks for the "bidder protection" there eBay.

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! no shill bidding, it is a way to protect High bidders from spam or unwanted requests, if the auction goes over 200 bucks then the IDschange, even if the buy it now it is set over 200 the user names change, no shill bidding, to the starter of this thread, PLEASE DO SOME RESEARCH BEFOREPOSTING WRONG INFORMATION!! you are confusing people!! smh.

FROM EBAY:

eBay limits how your bid history information is displayed by using anonymous names. When the highest bid, reserve or Buy It Now price on an item reaches orexceeds a certain level, other members cannot view your member-specific information-such as your User ID-on the Bid History page. Your complete User ID isshown to the seller of this item only. Bidders are assigned anonymous names, such as a***b. These anonymous names are used consistently across all auctionsthat exceed a certain level.

Regardless of the current high bid, when the reserve or Buy It Now price is initially set at or above $200.00, your User ID will appear as an anonymous namethroughout the duration of the auction, even if the seller lowers the price.

Note: Anonymous names may appear more than once in the bid history and may represent different bidders from different auctions.

Think about it like this. If you have an auction set up for a pair of shoes and somebody else with THE SAME pair for sale is watching your auction, what is tostop the other seller from contacting the people who are bidding on yours? This helps prevent that. You don't think that other people view similar items towhat they are selling and try to get those people to bid on their auctions instead? This cuts down on people being able to send somebody a message with a goodoffer on something else (similar item) not in auction form which takes away from eBays final goal...making money.

there's a possibility. say the seller has two or three partners in crime with different ebay IDs and constantly bid for the seller until he gets the"right" price from some unsuspecting sneakerheads. i'm sure that happens.