I have just now (8/6/08,10:10 PM MDT) attempted to bid on a very nice looking amber pendant and a jewelry set on the Lithuania portion of Bidz' site. This is what happened:
I clicked the Bid button. My new bid just barely had time to flash on the screen before it was replaced by another bid. I repeated this three times with each item. Each time my bid was instantly replaced. Each time the following bid was from the same person." And in each case, the shill name was different from the apparently genuine bid that had preceded mine. This all happened so fast that it could not possibly have been a real person bidding, much less two of them at the same time, much less on two of the site's nicer items only. This has never happened with the smaller pieces I have bid on.
And if that isn't bad enough, in each case the site hid the back and forth between me and the shill. It showed only my last "losing" bid and the shill's winning bid. This left a gap of several dollars between the genuine bid preceding mine and my last bid. So... It appears that such a gap in a bidding history is evidence of shilling. BEWARE!
The two auctions in question and the shills' names are as follows:
Auction #29020358, guillenritenour
Auction #29062600, shirleydunn
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