Here's a story that you might find interesting.

This seller is so unscrupulous that she deserves her very own blog entry. She is one of those sellers with a large following that is, in reality, pretty darn unethical.  She was suspended from ebay for several months for shill bidding (although on her ebay 'about me' page, she claimed that her account had been hacked).

She has bought contemporary adult clothing, made some alterations, and misrepresented the clothing  as vintage. Oh, and let's not forget to mention the children's clothing.  Apparently, it's become trendy to wear little kid's apparel. So, it's common for this seller and other popular sellers to buy contemporary (and vintage) children's clothes and pass them off as XS or XXS adult sizes.  What's the huge deal about this?  Well, I'll save this subject for another day.  This particular seller has done worse.

This seller intimidates & threatens those who write unfavorable things about her.  But worst of all, this seller STOLE a dress from another ebay seller and then listed that dress in one of her own auctions.  What the hell! How could this happen, you ask?? 

One day, the victim seller was looking through vintage clothing auctions & saw her stolen dress listed by this dishonest seller.  Needless to say, she was shocked & dismayed. She posted her concerns on the ebay Vintage Clothing & Accessories discussion board. Was she crazy, she wanted to know? Was it the same dress?  This seller was very distraught and confused. She wanted some honest opinions.  She had very detailed pictures of her dress that she sold to this person AND the pictures of the dress that this unscrupulous seller had posted in her auction. When comparing the pictures side by side, it was obvious that it was the SAME dress.  Of course, the dishonest seller denied privately to the victim seller over and over that it was the same dress. AND, even tried to smooth things over with the victim seller by depositing $150 into her Paypal account, which the victim seller promptly returned.  When that didn't work, she intimidated the victim seller by sending threatening emails and calling her house. The victim *was* going to file for an independent, federal, postal fraud investigation into the matter. Well, the victim seller dropped the matter for fear of retaliation or worse.

How did this dishonest seller steal a dress from another, you ask? OK, let's backtrack for a moment. Sometime earlier, dishonest seller used a buying I. D. to purchase a couple of dresses from the victim seller. Well, unfortunately the victim seller didn't put a delivery confirmation number on the package that she sent to the theif seller, who paid via Paypal. Thief seller *knew* that she would win a Paypal dispute against victim seller since she couldn't prove that the package got delivered.  Well, she won the dispute with Paypal, of course, and got her money back from the victim seller.  That's right. She got the money and kept the dress, which she later listed in her own auction.

And how much did this dress originally cost the popular thief seller, who easily commands three figures for some of her auctions?  It was less than $20.  She ripped off this other seller, who doesn't do *nearly* as well as she does, for less than $20.

Perplexing, isn't it?

How many of you are under the impression that some of these sellers actually make or design their own clothes?  I see questions & comments to this effect all the time and I just laugh.  Not at the person who is asking, but at the sellers who don't/won't deny this fallacy. But, I digress.

So where do all these oh-so hip & covetable clothes come from?  Well, some of it comes from thrift stores.  Some of it comes from estate sales. Some of it is bought from private collections. But, with lots of new vintage sellers cropping up everyday, these sources are becoming more & more unreliable. So, a lot of these sellers' stock comes from other ebay sellers.  Yes, that's right.  Other *unpopular* ebay sellers.

Now, let me say this….since the rise in popularity of vintage clothing and therefore, vintage clothing *sellers*, the ebay vintage clothing market is somewhat flooded.  Some of the items are crap.  Some of it is miscategorized, non-vintage clothing.  It can be a very daunting task to search for great, authentic, vintage clothing on ebay these days.

But, there are some gems to be had if you have the patience to look. Some successful sellers use "buying i.d.'s" to scour ebay for items that will make them big bucks.  I know…who cares, right?  It's capitalism. And you're right, I totally agree. As long as you're getting what you pay for, right?

But, what if the item you just won for over $200 in that fierce bidding war wasn't, in fact, vintage at all?  What if it was actually a two or three year old contemporary item that came from Target or Forever 21? Or worse, what if it was an item that was STILL currently available on a website (where your mom would shop) *on sale* for $14.99? What if it was children's' clothing?  Would you care?  MOST of the sellers I've observed have the same, tired, UNTRUE statement on all their listings:  "Vintage means one of a kind!"  They are basically promising you an item that you will never ever see on another human being. And, I assume, that young, naïve girls are bidding accordingly because they *believe* this statement.

Again, some of these sellers are fully aware of the fraud they are committing, but they don't care as long as you are willing to pay.  Some will  rip out the clothing labels hoping that the buyers are dumb enough to not ask any questions.  Recently, one seller wouldn't take down or correct her auction listing when a buyer pointed out AND gave her evidence that the "one of a kind" vintage item she was selling wasn't vintage at all. She let the auction end to the tune of $263.

It's very disheartening, isn't it?  You can protect yourself a little.  That will be the subject of a future blog.  Stay tuned.

Now, I HOPE that by telling you guys about this that you won't take this information and use it for evil. J  But, some of you may not be aware about what shill bidding is or what it does.  Again, this doesn't go on ALL the time with all sellers, but there are some sellers that got temporarily suspended from ebay for doing it.  In reality, ebay could really care less, especially if a power seller is involved, because shill bidding makes THEM more money. Hence, the TEMPORARY suspensions.

This is how it works and why they do it.  Seller A has a really cute dress that they think they should make three figures on.  So, they enlist their friends and family (who have multiple ebay i.d.'s) to bid early on their dress. Or, the seller herself/himself (who also has multiple ebay i.d.'s) will go to an internet café or some other place with a different IP address and bid on their own items.

Why do they go through so much trouble?  By bidding early in an auction, it creates more excitement and desire for a particular item and creates a bidding war.  If you are an experienced ebayer, and you REALLY want a particular item, then you know that you never bid on something until the very end of the auction. That's how you win your item without paying through the nose for it.

Why is it wrong?  Shill bidding artificially inflates the prices of items. It's called fraud. You paid three figures for a dress that you *may* have gotten for two, because the seller or their friends/family bid against you until they got the price they *wanted*. They basically stole from you. Make sense?

Sometimes this backfires on them, though. The shiller will be the high bidder on the item and the seller will have to *relist* because of a *non-paying bidder*.  Well, I always check the feedback left for others by these sellers, and if I don't see a negative left for the *non-paying bidder*, I get suspicious. Also, be leery of second chance offers soon after an auction ends. It could be the seller outbid themselves and is trying to reverse the damage.

How can you tell if an auction has shill bidding activity? One way is to pay attention to the i.d.'s that are bidding on the auction. Run the bidding history of that i.d. through ebay's advanced search option. If a particular i.d. has bid early on quite a few of a particular seller's auctions, but never wins, then that might be something to be suspicious of. Some of these i.d.'s will have low or zero feedback scores as well.  Now, that doesn't necessarily mean anything by itself, because there are lots of new buyers joining ebay everyday.

Again, shill bidding doesn't take place in ALL high priced auctions all of the time, but it does go on. And, it's dishonest.  Bidders get caught up in the excitement of an auction without realizing that something shady is going on. The next thing you know, you're eating ramen noodles for two weeks because you blew your cash on a not-so-one-of-a kind vintage dress from an unscrupulous seller.