Flippa banned my account (Is it shill bidding).

[flippingdesk]

I listed a premium domain of my client and bought ultra premium upgrades but since the auction was not going well i went ahead and promoted through facebook ads, adwords and Linkedin.
Since the domain was related to finance, i called up few stock brokers and invited them on flippa auction. One of them was interested and i went ahead helped him setup an account through telephonic conversation.


After that i received an email that my account is banned for paid bidding and when i asked more details i received the below information:

Hello,
Thanks for reaching out!
You can reach out to any interested buyers in or out of the Flippa marketplace. Shill Bidding occurs when a bid is placed without the intention to win the auction, or when a party related to the seller bids.
A bidder who has placed a bid, is most often an interested buyer as a seller must give them the benefit of the doubt as any buyer that backs out on a sale is going against Flippa Rules which may lead to sanctions applied to his/her Flippa account and possible banning from the site.
Please let me know if you need any further support, I am here to help.
Cheers,
Devoir

Now, my question to flippa is:


1) Is promoting auction url against flippa terms?
2) Is inviting interested bidders to auction against flippa?




I am completely against such biddings and have started threads here previously and also notified flippa multiple times about some auctions where such bids were happening.
My previous thread: http://experienced-people.net/forums...ding-on-Flippa




I am not sure why they are behind my account. They have also linked a possible link profile and i have sent multiple identity cards for the same few months ago.


Is it racism since i am from India. I mentioned the word "racism" since i saw the listing of "shipyourenemiesglitter.com" where a new seller from Australia was awarded a "super seller status" which is usually given to sellers who have completed multiple transactions successfully and received positive feedback as per flippa guidelines.

[crabfoot]

I don't think it is racism - but that new super seller might be a pal of somebody in the organisation. OTOH anybody who gets traffic to a weird URL like that probably deserves a medal of some sort.

The don't do racism, but they do make stupid decisions sometimes. You have to try and talk it out with them via email.
Promoting the auction off-Flippa is not forbidden - the email says that.

So you helped the man open an account - that does not amount to paying him to bid. Ask them what associations they can see, because all you can see is that you know this chap via email..

[KenW3]

Since the domain was related to finance, i called up few stock brokers and invited them on flippa auction. One of them was interested and i went ahead helped him setup an account through telephonic conversation.

...and did you help him set up his new account using his computer?

or did you use your own computer to set up his account to make it easier for him?

and when he placed his bid on Flippa, did he do this from his office?

[flippingdesk]

...and did you help him set up his new account using his computer?

or did you use your own computer to set up his account to make it easier for him?

and when he placed his bid on Flippa, did he do this from his office?

I am not sure from where he did everything. We are from different states and i just helped him through telephonic conversation.

[KenW3]

I am not sure from where he did everything. We are from different states and i just helped him through telephonic conversation.

Did Flippa learn that you helped him set up his account? Why does Flippa believe the two of you are linked? If there was nothing to make them suspicious, they would not have taken the action they did, so it must be related to the process he followed to open the account and place the bid. My questions were an attempt to find out how your bidder's account was set up, then how he used it to bid on your listing.

[tke71709]

Have you ever logged onto his account from your PC?

They have someone connected your two accounts and the only (easy) way to do this would be if you used the same PC to access the account. They could also monitor your PMs with the other party so if you discussed anything dodgy via PM they may be using that as evidence as well.

I'd be very shocked if they came right out and told you what evidence that they have, the game doesn't work that way.

[petertdavis]

It doesn't sound like shill bidding to me. But, it does sound like you may have used the same computer or IP address to setup the account and that's what they might be detecting as shill bidding. I'd suggest escalating the issue, assuming you're being honest with us here. No, I don't think they're being racist. There are thousands of users on Flippa from India, they'd be foolish to alienate that segment of their customer base. But, you should also realize that a great deal of the fraud on Flippa, and the Internet in general, comes from India and it's natural for people to be skeptical.

[DomainMagnate]

It looks like flippa didn't check this deep enough, just saw same ips and it may have triggered some semi-automated algorithm to close your account.

Just try to email them and explain the situation, might take some time, but you should be fine once they realize you were just helping someone who was legitimately interested in buying the site set up an account.