Shills for hire
- From: "Dhakala" <NoPoliticalCalls@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 May 2006 06:44:13 -0700
Apparently since 2005, according to the copyright date on their home
page.
Company Offers ''Illegal'' eBay Shill-Bidding Service
By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
May 31, 2006
A company is offering eBay sellers in Germany a shill-bidding service
to help them increase their final auction prices. XXLsell.com got some
attention in Germany last November, including this German-language post
on the AT-Mix.de website (http://www.at-mix.de/news/1317.html).
Sellers can join XXLsell, and, after submitting their eBay user names
and passwords, they can give XXLsell orders to shill bid on their
auctions up to a set price. Shill bidding is when sellers bid on their
own items to attract bidders and achieve higher selling prices, and is
against eBay's policy. The most notorious case of shill bidding on eBay
involved a ring of U.S. sellers who committed art fraud for which three
of the participants were prosecuted. XXLsell appears to be the first
commercial company offering shill-bidding services.
According to the eBay seller in Germany who brought the site to the
attention of AuctionBytes, there are two different fees for using
XXLsell. "If you allow XXLsell to use your eBay account for shilling on
other auctions, then you have to pay a 2 percent provision on each
shilling. If you don't want your eBay account being used for that
shilling, you have to pay twice as much, 4 percent." He said he was
skeptical of the site and said XXLsell is located outside of Germany
(the domain name is registered to a user in the Dominican Republic).
eBay spokesperson Catherine England stated in an email, "We are aware
of the service and its use is against eBay policy (it's also illegal).
Since the site is in German, we have sent notices to our German members
cautioning them against using this service." England also said it is
"never a good idea" to use a service that requires users to reveal
their user names and passwords.
XXLsell states on its site that it has 13,748 members and 1100
Powersellers. According to the source, if a member's account wins an
auction through a shill bid placed by the service, the buyer is not
obliged to buy, and the seller is not obliged to sell. However, the
seller has to pay the fees - both the XXLsell fees and the eBay fees.
.
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