having had a couple of dealings with a seller, who was a pain in the harris i noticed a few more of his items appear, and the highest bidder was new that day, and had a name similar to one on my old ones..(Hmm)

so i dug a little deeper,

check the highest bidders current bids or items they have bid on..I did this, this is how..

do this in the 'advanced search' option, look for 'by bidder' and tick the 'completed listings' box.

i did this and another seller came up as well as the original one..

so i checked the new sellers item bid, this is located next to the amount of bids number say's 'bids' and i looked in the list and there are the two other names..

the seller i got robbed by, and the current highest bidder on his item..

so i check the other item the current seller has, and guess who is the highest bidder ??

yup the same as the othe item, and also a previous bidder is the other seller..

phew, it's a long way round, but doing this i found three ebay users bidding on each others items..

this is not a coincidence but is 'shill bidding' and results in your acount being suspended..

so words of advice..

if you see a seller with a low feedback, always check other items, and the bidders list, if you see the same high bidder, or you see a bidder thats new in the past few days, be very cautious, just spend a couple of minutes doing the 'advanced search' checks to find these people...

in the end if we report these shill bidders if saves you and me a lot of money..

one item the shill bidders had they managed to bid up an extra £25..!!

so just think, you bid say £5, the shill bidder bids £6 then another shill of say £10 you try £8 then £9 then £10 and then £11 and think great, i've got this, then another high bidder of £15, and a new user that day but bidding, so you carry on upto £16 and you win..that £11 profit they made from you..

then when it's to late you do this check, which i admit sounds very long winded, but you check the new users current bids, and find he's bid on the sellers other items, and then you see another bidder on more of the sellers items and before you know it, you find the seller has bid on one of the previous bidders items, it goes on and on, making money out of people that want an item,

but what if the shill bidder wins ??

they get feedback, lose a few pence in ebay fees then re-list the item on another account, saying 'bought in error' or 'not required' it happens..

be carefull christmas is coming...