- Joined
- Feb 20, 2015
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- 23
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Obviously its frowned upon and against rules and , though I'm not the most knowledgeable on the whole auction process and whatnot, but its obviously illegal.
But what can one do in a situation where you have a domain you're interested in bidding on and you have a good hunch that the seller is shillbidding or having his associates shillbid a domain up so that the winning bidder ends up being forced, if he really wants the domain, to bid significantly higher than what he might have had to in the absense of such fraudulent activity.
Are there ways that shill bidding can be proven? If so, what are the elements that must be proven and what consistutes sufficient evidence? What's the normal outcome of a situation where such an activity is proven. I can imagine the seller should get suspended or banned from whatever particular auction site that such activity occurred at.
However, is there any recourse to the buyer. In other words if bidder 1 is proven to be either the seller themselves or someone working in conjunction with the seller, can the buyer that would have been the winning bidder retain any binding rights to the domainbonce the illegitimate bids are stricken or do such actions amount to something that may have effected more than just the 2nd highest bidder such that the auction is considered null and void?
The reason I ask is that a couple weeks ago there was a auction on a dropped name at a certain site specializing in such domain acquisitions and bmi bid it up pretty high (for me at least) and was the winning bidder up to the last few minutes when all of a sudden, my father calls be regarding something important and I am forced to stop participating in the last minute bidding, which had all but slowed to the point where it looked like i was going to be winning bidder on a domain for around $1500 but with much better potential if i turned around and flipped it but the had more potential if developed as it would naturally promote what do for a living. The winning bidder comes out of no where at the end of the auction and snags it out from under me for no more that $100 more and at those prices, there weren't any other bidders but me for a while.
So had i just about gotten that fiasco outbof no there low and behold, someone lists it on Flippa no more than 2 weeks afterwards. Furthermore, he then does a real Short auction time period and with no nereserve , I think he starting at $1. He says hes from the US on his Flippa page but whois info shows some foreign corporation is the register owner and there's not much I can find out on the guy or the corp. Other to say (a) his description od domain potential shows that hes not overly familiar with the industry that the domain belongs to nor who his real target market of end users are., he's got over $300k in transactions but a surprising number of feedback was from users who were at some later point banned or suspended, and he's got a very small period of time left on this auction and he's nowhere near where he just bought it for last week.
I wanted to test this one random bidder who's now out bidding me in huge jump sums so he's got to have set ar a real high high max bid. I'm guessinging it sits right at what this sellar is looking for as a low end of what he's really willing to sell it for, and even though we are still a ways away from what I had bid for it last time, I get the feeling that this other bidder is a shill and even if I do win the auction at a lower price, I almost don't want to anymore knowing it coukd of been a lot less if the seller played fair.
He already screwed me over in the first auction taking advantage of me having to take an imortant call right near the end and swooping in for the win. I really wanted to win this auction and cause him a substantial loss but it seems he's insuring himself by having Shill bids cover it up to a guaranteed profitable flip.
Thoughts? Can i get such a guy banned or something or is this perfectly acceptable behaviour? Isn't this why they make reserves? Maybe I'm off base Here, but I want to take this domain cheaper than he got for at the dropped name auction, which in of it self was pretty cheap?
But what can one do in a situation where you have a domain you're interested in bidding on and you have a good hunch that the seller is shillbidding or having his associates shillbid a domain up so that the winning bidder ends up being forced, if he really wants the domain, to bid significantly higher than what he might have had to in the absense of such fraudulent activity.
Are there ways that shill bidding can be proven? If so, what are the elements that must be proven and what consistutes sufficient evidence? What's the normal outcome of a situation where such an activity is proven. I can imagine the seller should get suspended or banned from whatever particular auction site that such activity occurred at.
However, is there any recourse to the buyer. In other words if bidder 1 is proven to be either the seller themselves or someone working in conjunction with the seller, can the buyer that would have been the winning bidder retain any binding rights to the domainbonce the illegitimate bids are stricken or do such actions amount to something that may have effected more than just the 2nd highest bidder such that the auction is considered null and void?
The reason I ask is that a couple weeks ago there was a auction on a dropped name at a certain site specializing in such domain acquisitions and bmi bid it up pretty high (for me at least) and was the winning bidder up to the last few minutes when all of a sudden, my father calls be regarding something important and I am forced to stop participating in the last minute bidding, which had all but slowed to the point where it looked like i was going to be winning bidder on a domain for around $1500 but with much better potential if i turned around and flipped it but the had more potential if developed as it would naturally promote what do for a living. The winning bidder comes out of no where at the end of the auction and snags it out from under me for no more that $100 more and at those prices, there weren't any other bidders but me for a while.
So had i just about gotten that fiasco outbof no there low and behold, someone lists it on Flippa no more than 2 weeks afterwards. Furthermore, he then does a real Short auction time period and with no nereserve , I think he starting at $1. He says hes from the US on his Flippa page but whois info shows some foreign corporation is the register owner and there's not much I can find out on the guy or the corp. Other to say (a) his description od domain potential shows that hes not overly familiar with the industry that the domain belongs to nor who his real target market of end users are., he's got over $300k in transactions but a surprising number of feedback was from users who were at some later point banned or suspended, and he's got a very small period of time left on this auction and he's nowhere near where he just bought it for last week.
I wanted to test this one random bidder who's now out bidding me in huge jump sums so he's got to have set ar a real high high max bid. I'm guessinging it sits right at what this sellar is looking for as a low end of what he's really willing to sell it for, and even though we are still a ways away from what I had bid for it last time, I get the feeling that this other bidder is a shill and even if I do win the auction at a lower price, I almost don't want to anymore knowing it coukd of been a lot less if the seller played fair.
He already screwed me over in the first auction taking advantage of me having to take an imortant call right near the end and swooping in for the win. I really wanted to win this auction and cause him a substantial loss but it seems he's insuring himself by having Shill bids cover it up to a guaranteed profitable flip.
Thoughts? Can i get such a guy banned or something or is this perfectly acceptable behaviour? Isn't this why they make reserves? Maybe I'm off base Here, but I want to take this domain cheaper than he got for at the dropped name auction, which in of it self was pretty cheap?
I know its silly, and in the end every time I quit the auction I never get an e-mail that the person who out-bid me decided not to buy the domain, so in light of this I think the Shill bidding was more in my head than factual reality.
