ebay member - quickshipgolf - Shill Bidder?

I wanted to ask others on here their opinion. I was looking at an item for sale by ebay member quickshipgolf.

I saw an item was continually bid up, and I was curious who was doing it. I noticed that the person bidding was one of those "private bidders." I found that in the past 30 days, they had 550 bids on a total of 436 items. That in itself is a red flag, but on top of that, 42% of the bids were on quickshipgolf items.

If I am remembering correctly, there are several other sellers connected to quickshipgolf, correct? I would guess that this "private" bidder bids on the same sellers items to bid them up to an acceptable amount. I took a screenshot showing what i am talking about.

Am I reading too much into this?

I thought the same exact thing looking at that very item. I have always been under the impression that people do this if they aren't getting the price they want.

This used to be huge issue with some of the larger sellers, 3Balls most notably. eBay tried to, or tried to crack down on this, but my guess would be they turn a blind eye to it, when it comes to their largest revenue generators (high volume sellers).

It's a large issue with many of these volume sellers, and even lower level sellers. If one of their shadow accounts or buddies wins they just relist until they get a buyer at the price level they want. Frustrating

I have come to the conclusion that eBay could not care less if their bigger sellers do this. There is no way they could miss it if they actually wanted to police it. The higher an item sells for, the more money eBay collects. So I'm sure we'll be seeing a big crackdown on this practice sometime very soon. Like, never.

I figured it was a shill. But, it seems so obvious. They aren't even trying to hide it at this point

I mean, even wrx members don't bid on that many golf items (usually) I knew something was up. The shill put in one more bid. Is this quickshipgolf connected to any other ebay sellers?

Looks like it is. This is what I found from Reddit when I wanted to buy some clubs from Ksouth9:

I could never get the price I wanted, and their shilling is so bad they keep sending prices up to a point where other seller prices are lower than theirs. Like if customers would keep wildly bidding on higher prices than their competition. I think this kind of shilling is done using a bot or something similar because they have hundreds of sales at the same time with dozens of quick unreal bids.

Looks like it is. This is what I found from Reddit when I wanted to buy some clubs from Ksouth9:

 

I could never get the price I wanted, and their shilling is so bad they keep sending prices up to a point where other seller prices are lower than theirs. Like if customers would keep wildly bidding on higher prices than their competition. I think this kind of shilling is done using a bot or something similar because they have hundreds of sales at the same time with dozens of quick unreal bids.

I noticed this too while bidding on stuff from ksouth9 recently. To be fair, even with the shady bidding, the prices are great. JPX EZ forged 4-GW new in plastic for $300 and a new in plastic 2014 big bertha 3w for $55. Sure I could have gotten them for slightly less without the shill bidding, but he could also just list those irons for buy it now for $450 and they would still sell.

Quickship golf buys nearly every used club that comes through the PGA Superstores in Myrtle Beach. The used club selection in both of these stores used to be fabulous. Now all the used stuff goes straight to quickship and never hits the floor. Sucks

While that looks bad, usually shill bidders are closer to 100% bidder activity and have several retractions. For example, below is a screenshot of an auction from seller 'golfetail' in 2011. The number of bids in 30 days has to be a full time job.

Wow, that is insane! 691 bid retractions in 6 months, 100% bidding on that 1 seller, and Ebay lets them continue to bid?

I've bought from GolfEtail, probably got bid up by that account.

Pretty soon someone will tell the story that it's an international bidder. That resells or something. That was always the story whenever the question came up about 3balls using shill bids.

eBay use to be very good about keeping the shill bidders in check.....I guess times have changed

Noticed a very similar activity when I was trying to big on an epic subzero recently.

I think I have noticed this on ksouth9 auctions before too!

Not sure about the eBay stuff, but dang OP - you have almost 40 open tabs in your browser. That's impressive all by itself.

Don't get me wrong, I've gotten some good deals via Ksouth, but I too noticed this. Was trying to bid on a set of irons but kept getting sniped in the last seconds and the ending prices all 'happened' to be within a ~$15 range of one another

thanks for the tip folks. I used to bid on the ksouth stuff and wondered how they could put up so many listings of the same item at once and always end up with the same price. Won't look at these sellers anymore.

I wish I had shill bidders bidding on my stuff. Ultimately it doesn't bother me. It's just like those girls who tease in high school. You learn not to pay them any attention.

The great thing about these sellers is that you never have to worry about bidding too much. If you win their auction, you know that you couldn't have bought it from them for less.

Not sure about the eBay stuff, but dang OP - you have almost 40 open tabs in your browser. That's impressive all by itself.

Haha wow! That is impressive indeed.

Who cares anyway. Bid what you're willing to pay and wait until the auction ends. No "shill" can force you to pay more than you wish to bid.

Or better yet just stick to BIN and say no to the whole silly auction game.

The funny thing is I deleted a bunch of tabs recently....

A lot of them are golf related - golfwrx, ebay, Craigslist, the Grint, Evnroll, etc. I think theres a couple reddit (at least one is probably reddit golf), I see a Wheel of Time page, amazon, usps (golf shipment), and a fantasy football page. You know, just the basics. I use the great suspender app to help my computer as well.

I've purchased quite a lot from both ksouth and quickship in the past three months and didnt have these issues and bought the items at very good prices in all cases. However, if it gets going into semi retail range, i drop out anyway

I saw an Anser iron auction by quickship that jumped the bid from 246 to 296 by a bidder with zero feedback. Looked awfully suspicious. Item number 322745612398

Awesome stuff. I also have been burnt by the process. Please send the info to eBay. See if the are protecting the integrity of a great deal, the whole reason we shop there.

Not sure about the eBay stuff, but dang OP - you have almost 40 open tabs in your browser. That's impressive all by itself.

And I'm sure those Craigslist tabs are just "Missed Connections"....

I got a set of the Mizuno JPX EZ forged +1 Inch over last week from them. I sniped in last second and got then for $284 plus shipping. I pushed the bid from $272 up but that was it. A set of new Mizuno irons for $284 .. YES PLEASE!!

Id say they are def using shill bidders. I was bidding on a JPX900 driver and it was going for ~$107...I am a great sniper, sniped within the last 3 seconds and it jumped to $145

Not sure about the eBay stuff, but dang OP - you have almost 40 open tabs in your browser. That's impressive all by itself.

That's like my wife's phone. She complained it had gotten slow so I looked at it for her. Every app she had ever opened was still open and she had 20 - 30 tabs open in chrome...