Ebay Shoppers Beware!! "Shilling" Scheme

I came to discover a fairly large scale golf club mover on ebay named "mrodyssey09" has been breaking the rules of ebay and been doing a scheme know as Shilling. Shilling is where you use alternative accounts to place bids on your own items to increase bidding amounts. Mrodyssey09 listed roughly 10 garage Toulon's yesterday for a 24 hr listing that would end around 1am to 3am. At one point last night 9 of the 10 auctions were being led by accounts with 0 feedback history (basically new accounts). These were bids that were WAY, WAY up in value and placed early in the bidding process. So instead of you placing a bid for say, $150 and being the new leader, he was driving up prices by having your $150 bid say "outbid by another buyer" increasing the likelihood of you increasing your bid. The reason he had them end at such a unusual time is because he wanted you to keep bidding before you went to bed, rather than once at the very end of the auction.

Naturally in this scheme, if that "fake" account happens to win, he loses but it's not the case. There were 5 cases of that out of the 10 and all 5 were magically relisted before 7am that same morning. He likely claimed the buyer requested a cancellation, which was him, so he wouldn't be charged 10-13% in ebay fees.

He's doing this on a large scale with all of his auctions. I've alerted Ebay but don't expect Ebay to take action to putting a stop to this. In the mean time, be smart, don't get suckered.

I've included one of the 5 examples of where his fake account actually won the auction, so he quickly relisted it at a much higher rate (or best offer) to sell for a higher amount than the highest "real" bidder. If you look up his past history, you'll see a large bid by a 0 feedback account almost every time.

thanks Rory-- good work,,

If there's any funny business at all on an eBay golf equipment auction, it's safe to say it's counterfeit merchandise.

There are enough reputable sellers out there. Don't be a sucker for a great "deal."

Sadly, I don't expect ebay to act on this either, although it's hard to blame them when I'm sure this happens in sales across their site, not just golf. I don't know what kind of safeguard you could put into a computer program to even detect this kind of thing.

The way I prevent myself from getting suckered into this is I bid early for the full amount that I am willing to bid, then I don't touch it anymore. If I win-great. If I don't, then someone else wanted it more than me, and chances are I'll find another one of that item already listed.

There’s lots of accounts on eBay doing this. There’s also lots not doing it. Move along if you don’t like it, eBay isn’t going to do a thing about it. Their money is still coming in, eventually.

There are many more worthwhile causes in the world, in my opinion. And, yes, it absolutely sucks that eBay lets it happen.

I do the same as you, decide how much I'm willing to pay, bid and ride it out. At the end of the day there's nothing I'm bidding for on eBay that I absolutely have to have.

Shilling or not you can't beat his prices. I'll gladly take one for ~$250 over the other recently sold ones for $400-$500. Can anyone prove they're counterfeit Toulon Tour?

I didn't indicate, in any way, that they were counterfeit.

Secondly, if they were "great prices" he wouldn't need to cheat to up the bid values. Toulon garage putters don't hold their value like some may think. I see garage putters regularly sell for $200-250 when listed in the open market. Most of the garage putters selling for $400-500 are solely individuals doing buy it now and hoping someone wants exactly that customization and wants it now.

You're just jealous you didn't win it. Real people are winning his auctions.

This is the reason I use a sniper app. It's probably been well over a decade since the last time I entered a bid on an auction through eBay. Like said above - put in what I'm willing to pay and wait until the end of the auction. Set it and forget it.

I wonder if the seller is just using this method to move large numbers of product without paying listing fees with the "second chance" feature. Find out what the bidders are willing to pay, who is willing to pay what you want out of it, and skip the tire kickers.

In no way is my hypothesis an endorsement.

Here's a quick example of the price range I'm talking about in my last post. Obviously finish and model play a key in which are more valuable but overall, a lot of the models that have been around since 2017 go for fairly cheap.

As far as your last response, you're soooo totally right. I did quite a bit of research to prove a theory true regarding a scheme purely out of jealously that somebody else "won" a putter. 4 hours later, that "sold to a real person" putter was relisted for buy it now at 15% above the highest bid. 4 other bids sold to "real people" were relisted the same way hours after as well.

I shared this to help prevent follow wrxer's from getting swindled but for you (thevaporz), feel free to disregard and block me from all future communication if that's how you intend to interpret my posts.

I understand the frustration in not winning an auction, and it's a pretty slimy m.o. on ebay... but who is getting swindled in this situation?

The putter I had initial interest in is still very much available actually. Frustration isn't the word I'd use because I can buy it right now and easily afford it. I was curious why one of his auctions had shot up so high, so fast while another hadn't, so I started digging into all of his listings and past listings and consistently saw the same thing again and again...a massive early bid from a 0 feedback account.

So he's basically setting a reserve price that way. The sold prices you cited for different putters are irrelevant. You said it yourself, prices are "finish and model" dependent. I don't find any other blacked out Austin flowneck Toulon Tour issue putters available for sale on ebay right now.

Were you the last bidder at $212 on that one? Or did you really expect to win it for $150? Obviously someone else was willing to pay more for it, and that was a Best Offer showing $279. I don't know if ebay shows the true "sold" price that way or if $279 was the listed price OBO so the actual price could have been lower than that.

I had no interest in that one. It was just an example. I think there were several in that color of various models. On "Buy it now or best offer", ebay doesn't show the actual price it sold for (to answer your question). And yes, he was basically setting a reserve, which would have been fine if he had done that, or done the buy it now, but he was tampering with the auctions, which is against the terms of agreement for sellers.

Who knows, this may be the new norm on ebay, like dealing with Bots on Swag, Lamb, etc's on rare releases.

Here's an example of a Toulon Austin flow neck that sold for $227/shipped or less, earlier this month. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Toulon-Odyssey-Austin-Flow-Neck-Putter-Tour-Issue-/401954408561?hash=item5d96598871%3Ag%3AoygAAOSwa%7ENdyMwX&nma=true&si=l9jUoBUEALlrXyLrB8GKSsk401g%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Again, that's irrelevant. Worn condition, different finish, shaft, grip. I'd be totally fine with $279 for that basically brand new blacked out naked Austin instead. Just because you're not getting the price YOU WANT for something doesn't make you a victim.

I'm failing to see how my initial post has ANYTHING to do with the "price you or I want." In case you missed it, I was being sarcastic in my initial reply to you. I could care less about this putter (which I never wanted) or any other putter he was selling. It was about a bulk seller breaking the rules (terms of agreement) to extract more money from unknowing bidders on a large scale of auctions.

Shilling probably began the day after eBay launched. You can drive yourself nuts if you're consumed by all that stuff. Set your own limits and if you get beat, so be it.

eBay doesn’t care as long as they’re getting paid. Like site sponsors here...

Hey man, I wasn't trying to be confrontational, and I sure didn't accuse you of not being able to afford anything. I really don't care what you can and can't afford, frankly and respectfully. I was just wondering who, in your opinion, is getting swindled here? It's not the word I'd use in this situation, and I was curious to hear why you have that opinion. I am the first to admit that I am not quick on the uptake and might be missing who the victim is here.

I'll try to keep this brief. The buyer is the victim because they aren't competing in a natural supply/demand market that ebay's no reserve bidding is based on. It's manipulation to cause bidders to think it's market value is higher than it actually is.

Take a set of irons he recently sold. I think they sold for $600 or something but his fake account had a bid near that number. It forced the reach person, who really wanted those irons to likely have to pay $40-100 more than they would have needed to to win those irons. You can't put an exact number on it but it certainly plays a big role in manipulating the auction to force buyers to have to pay more.

Dont listen to the toxicity in here. Thanks for the heads up and I will not be doing any business with mrodyssey.

OP- appreciate you tracking this down, and I don’t for the life of me understand the snark coming from some folks on here. Only thing I can think of is people are angry or stressed in real life and come on here and blow off steam.

I’d love someone to point out any snark or toxicity I have posted. I was just tying to understand the logic, because I believe this shill bidding is a victimless crime. It’s a fact of life buying on eBay - it’s sheisty, it’s against the rules, and I wish eBay didn’t turn a blind eye to it; but at the end of the day if someone wants to sell something for more than I’m willing to pay (regardless of how they go about getting there), I’m not going to worry much about it. Especially if eBay isn’t going to. All I stand to lose is the 3 seconds it takes to type the numbers of my bid, and me having to continue my search.

That’s just my opinion, I was trying to understand the OP’s - not tell him his opinion was wrong. It’s amazing how unfamiliar some people are with what a conversation is all about.

Don’t always assume folks are referring to you, necessarily.

Then why don’t folks just man up and call out Vaporz then? He and I are the only ones who have really had a back-and-forth with the OP.

I was just speaking in generalities. I’ll stop by the school a little later sister Margaret.

I don’t even know what the sister Margaret comment means. That’s not snark, is it? Generally speaking.

Ebay is the only real 'victim' when the shill bidding is to avoid seller fees.