Just wanted to alert anyone who might be considering buying from an ebayer called "darksantuary" that he may possibly be a shill bidder. I say this as he goes by another name too apparently; "huntiktradingcards".

I came to this conclusion after I spotted what I though was one of darksantuary's auctions and was surprised to learn that it was another trader instead. Given the stupid prices that they both charged, I looked into each one further:

1) They appear to both be selling the same mixture of items at the same time.
2) They are both located in the same place.
3) Their pictures are taken on the same orange table surface and against the same green plastic lid (see hereand here for an example).
4) I happen to know that darksantuary's previous Ebay alias was "Spen2004", and I suspected him of dubious practices under that previous name too.

Now I was under the impression that it was against the Ebay rules policy for somebody to hold two accounts like this?

Ironically, since Ebay made everybody more anonymous on Ebay, it has become harder to spot these people. Exactly how that stupid rule helps "To keep eBay a safe place for buyers and sellers", I don't know. I personally think that being able to see who you're bidding against and to see what auctions that person has won before are helpful tools to protect yourself against fraudulent bids.

Anyway, thought I'd post a warning here.

Shit...I bought quite a few things off of Spen2004...Mostly my tyranids actually which would explain some of the high prices those auctions reached despite the rarity of the figures...

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I have since checked EBay's policy, and sellers are apparently allowed more than one account as long as they don't use one to bid on the other... Wow, how dumb is that, and when was that changed?

I edited my initial post to be less inflammatory in light if this.

Well if he's shill bidding in both directions, that's against eBay rules and you can get him banned from eBay for doing so.

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It is very hard to check the bids though - they're anonymous! So as long as nether actually wins another's auction, you can't tell...

I don't understand why Ebay allows multiple accounts though - why would someone want more than one account unless they were up to no good?

You can appeal to eBay and they'll check the bidding history for suspicious bidding patterns.

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Not in defence of this guy, but in general it could be hard to stop without penalising normal people. I rent a house with 3 other people, we all have separate ebay accounts but they all of-course go to one postal address. That's 4 accounts with different names but in the same house/address who would take pics on the same table, but all 4 accounts are entirely legit. We each only have one account, used independently, but it could appear that we were the same person to a suspicious person

Any past suspicions aside, 2 people selling similar stuff from the same address and same background could , for example, just be 2 brothers who had the same kind of toys as kids?

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Well, that's quite true and possible, I admit.

I still thought it fair to warn folks though.

This allows sellers to buy on ebay with one account and resell with another account. So customers who do not suspect anything won't be able to see that the seller is selling a small part of a lot that he bought at a low price 2 weeks before.

Ebay has gone to a real sh*tty thing. Always was bad and has turned worse and worse.
Also, most of the times prizes go above store prizes.

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I have also recently been a victim of shill bidding. An item was listed at £1, I bid. Another bidder came in and made small increment bids until I was outbid. Then, in the last 30 seconds, they cancelled their highest bid and I won with my highest. I left negative feedback, which the seller didnt like, and informed eBay. The trouble is that holding multiple accounts is allowed. Also, if you report a suspected case of shill bidding, eBay will just check the IP. If the person uses two seperate machines, or a PC and a mobile phone, then eBay wont do anything - partly because they really dont care, partly because they cant prove much, and partly because shill bidding actually benefits them (higher final price means a higher commision to eBay). I am still emailing eBay about this, as the shill account had 100% recent bidding history with the one seller, had a feedback of 7, 3 of which were from that seller, had cancelled 20 bids in the last 6 months and had rarely won anything at all.

Bottom line, eBay dont care.

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Well I just won some Epic from that huntik what ever guy ... and I know of Darksanctuary ... Both over charge post and I was going to buy another item from huntik but according to the eBay warning I could only buy one item from him ... WTF ?!?!?!?!?! I'm afraid I'm not going to give him a very good eBay rating ... Hopefully I won't have any trouble ...

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Good go Mate !! He is a #^&*)!@!

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Devils Advocate here...

Is there really anything wrong with buying cheap and selling for a profit? Isn't that being an entrepreneur and an accepted form of business?

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