Avoid Using Deceptive Practices When Selling Through Online Auction Sites

Online auction sites have rapidly increased in popularity and have become the most popular method for people to sell goods online. With the increase in popularity of the online auction marketplace has come an increased amount of competition which can at times make it difficult to sell certain types of items. To counter this, some unscrupulous sellers have resorted to using deceptive tactics in an attempt to drive the price of their item up.

This unfortunate reality has made it necessary for even the most well intentioned sellers to be aware of some of the most common deceptive practices so that they can avoid accidentally using techniques that might be considered questionable.

The oldest, most common, and easiest to prevent online auction deceptive practice is to market and sell an item and then simply refuse to ship the merchandise. Clearly to accept money for something that is never delivered is illegal in any jurisdiction, but most of those who attempt this technique base their hopes on their ability to stay completely anonymous. To counter this, most online auction sites now allow users to provide some sort of verification information (not shared with the public). After this verification information is validated, the online auction site itself will vouch for the identity of the seller. Of course, almost all online auction sites use a rating method to allow members to leave feedback on one another.

Anyone who resorts to such a blatant technique as taking money and running is clearly going to have abysmal feedback. Of course, one option is to simply create a new account and sell again. For this reason, many buyers will not consider purchasing anything from a seller unless he or she a sufficient number of positive feedback responses. Of course, there is nothing to prevent a bunch of sellers from going into collusion by leaving each other false positive feedback. For this reason, most online auction sites now only allow a feedback entry to be entered after a transaction.

Another dastardly technique that some unscrupulous online auction site vendors have used is a method of suppressing bidding often known as "shilling." Shilling involves aliases or accomplices of the seller continuously outbidding previous bidders by a small amount until the bids stop coming. As the auction nears its end, the highest bid (either the seller or a partner) will withdraw his or her bid and the winner will be one of the legitimate bidders. The bidder will never be aware that he or she is actually paying a much higher price than what would have been necessary had the auction been legitimate. Shilling is becoming an increasingly popular tactic as online auction sites become more sophisticated and shut down some of the other deceptive practices.