Buying On Ebay

When buying on ebay, does the item:
"Bid activity (%) with this seller" when reviewing who is bidding display the percentage of buys this customer has with that particular seller, as it insinuates? If so, a customer with a 100% bid activity with a seller, means that everything he has bid on has been to the one seller?
I was recently noticed that with one seller, a particular buyer always moves the bid to my posted max bid. When looking it show that he has a 100% bid activity with this buyer. Just looks fishy to me.

ebay defines it as follows:
This shows the percentage of all bids from this bidder that went to this specific seller.

So yes, if it's 100%, you may be seeing a shill bidder. It also could be a bidder who just happens always to buy from this seller, but that seems unlikely except for a new member who has just done his/her first and single bid.

Yeah, I thought so. The buyer in this case has a feedback score of over 100, but the seller is brand new, with no feedback as a seller.

Some key points I've learned to prevent getting taken by shill bidders:

1) Always know the max price you are willing to pay for an item and never exceed that. This is always what I'd be willing and happy to pay Buy It Now. In fact, just put in your max bid in the last 10 seconds of the auction and you're set.

2) Be extra sure you follow rule #1 with sellers with no feedback or even new sellers. Or buy only from sellers you trust.

I just put in my maximum from the start and I don't go back to see if I'm winning or not, I don't care. My max is my max. Win or lose, I won't spend more than that.

It is not uncommon for a modern Australia collector too only collect from me.

Thanks, I believe that the rule of not exceeding your max is how best to safeguard against this problem. Thanks for the input.

Another strategy is to not bid until the last few seconds of an auction leaving no time for the shill account to push your bid up.

I usually only participate in a couple auctions a week on ebay, give or take a couple. However, lately I've been buying a lot of cheap sets (25-50 cents each) at auction that I need for an area I collect from the same seller, to the tune of a couple hundred or so auctions over the last 3 weeks. I'm sure that if I looked right now, it probably shows 90%+ of my recent bids are with that seller.

Ok, so I started bidding on this item and put a max bid of 200.00, less than I was willing to pay, but enough to get it started. Several bidders posted offers, but they all stopped well before 200.00, then I noticed bids from another bidder at 5.00 increments until it was 205.00. I then upped my max to my real max, 350.00. I asked the buyer a question about condition, and left the impression that I was interested. Once again the same bidder made 5.00 bids until it was at 355.00. Over my max and the point I started asking you guys for advise. Not another dollar was bid on the 355.00 for 3 days, and the auction ended at that 355.00. An hour later I got a "Second Offer" for 350.00 as the other bidder dropped out. The bidder shows a 100% bid percentage with this seller. My next question, does the bid % for a particular buyer cover all the bidders bids, or just the last month. I checked the bid percentage of the other bidders those showed everything from 1% to 10%. Second question, if I become convinced that this is a case of Shill Bidding, do I report it?
I would certainly hate to be wrong. As for the item, at this point I am not sure I even want it anymore as I feel the bidding was crooked, and manipulated. I am not going to take the "Second Chance Offer".

That bid was definite manipulated. I wouldn't take the offer. The seller will undoubtedly relist it - just bid with 5 seconds left on the next one.

I would put this seller on my list of sellers to never deal with again. I wouldn't want to encourage unethical behavior by giving him my business.

I'd contact the seller and offer him $100
take it or leave it and see if he either
takes it or counters...

But, then, of course, if you name the seller,
we will all likely recognize the name and
tell you we already know about them...

It truly interested in the item....
Go thru the bid history....reomve all of the schill bids.
You then rightfully would have won the item
for 1 bid higher that the last bidder/

Also....please post the ebay item #.
Everyone would like to see this seller

Let's not forget that J.W.Scott was a shill bidder [not known as shill bidding in those days].
I wonder what he would add to this discussion !

I've been buying stamps on ebay for 16 years and coins for 2 years. Shill bidding is MUCH worse with coin auctions. Regardless, I never ever bid before 7 seconds left. Not sure why anyone would bid hours or days before an auction. It just invites bid manipulation.