Watch Out for eBay Seller huiyan*2013 (?)

[Ren-Ren]

This is a Chinese seller who has a few ponies for sale. I can't prove it, but I suspect they are bidding up their own items--a whole lot of their feedback comes from buyers listed as "private" and right at the end of my auction several "private" bids were placed right up to my maximum in one dollar increments. It just seems very fishy to me.  Since they accept returns I have asked them to cancel the transaction. Not sure if they will do so or if doing so will cause them to leave me negative feedback, but it just feels wrong and I don't want to deal with them.

[RockinPrettyBeats]

They are private because the seller has the feedback set to private for some reason.

[Shenanigans]

My sister and I both have ebay accounts and I joked with her that I could bid on one of her items since it only had one bid (which I never did and would NEVER do) but that made me stop and wonder if people actually DID do things like that. I guess it would be easy to set up a seperate account and set it to private and no one would ever know. I really would like to think the best of people, but I'd be a bit suspicious too with all the one dollar bids and especially if it happens on her auctions a lot. It's better safe than sorry anyway :/

[Ren-Ren]

They are private because the seller has the feedback set to private for some reason.

Could they do this for only some feedbacks? About 20% of the feedbacks aren't marked private.

[mshesha]

I bought a pony from them, still got a good deal

[ponylady]

Ren~sellers cannot leave negative feedback for buyers.  So you will be ok
 
It seems to me the buyers have their feedback marked to private, not the seller.  And anyone can do that.  I don't think it's smart, as it looks like you have something to hide but it is their choice.

[Ren-Ren]

Oh yeah, forgot that buyers can't get neg feedback

The fact that it is the buyers who have marked themselves as private is what raised my red flag. I've rarely seen anyone do it and now this seller has tons of private feedback, plus all the bidders on my item were private. It makes me think that the seller has lots of accounts that they use to bid stuff up. If anyone had retracted a bid on the auction would I be able to tell? Hmm...I suppose that I would have received an "outbid" notice if that were the case. But I still can't shake the feeling that something weird went on...

[RockinPrettyBeats]

Hum, are the ones that you can see all from an earlier date?

Maybe the seller used to have public feedback and changed it to private.

[Ringlets]

I've seen similar things on ebay and wondered about sellers having other accounts set up to shill bid. I reported a couple of very dodgy ones ...
Its hard to know for sure  if its shill bidding if there's more than one other bidder bumping up the prices. Other than keep an eye on the other bidders activity. If you click on the other bidder you can see the amount of bids they placed with this sellers items, the percentage of bids compared to that with other sellers items, and the other catagories of item that the person has bid on - sometimes that will show up a shill bidder
Lets hope that this person is genuine. there are already waaay too many dodgy peeps on ebay lately