Does Blind Bidding Make You Uncomfortable?

**benitez17** · January 19th, 2010, 5:56 AM

On Flippa, the user names of the people who are bidding against you are obfuscated, so you only know them as bidder #X. If I remember correctly, you could see the names of your competition at Sitepoint, which was reassuring because you could do a background check if you felt something unusual was going on.

The reason I am asking this now is that I am bidding on a few sites at the moment, and I noticed that in one instance, a new bidder has emerged just before the end of the auction, drove the price over the reserve, and is now my only competition. I really don't think anything unethical is going on, but I have no way to know for sure.

I wonder if I am bidding against a shill bidder in any of these auctions, and I don't understand why Flippa would hide such important information from bidders. Can anyone come up with a good reason to hide that information, especially in light of the recent problems at other auction sites?

**3Six** · January 19th, 2010, 7:10 AM

The previous system had optional private bidding - and scam sellers used that for a lot of shill bidder. Now that all bidders are private it makes it easier for the scam seller. Now he needs to have only one fake ID that he can use for all his shill bidding in multiple listings and it doesn't look suspicious that in every listing of his there is always one - just one - private bidder.

**benitez17** · January 19th, 2010, 8:48 AM

You're right that Sitepoint allowed private bids; I forgot about that. Making all bids private is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

**DomainMagnate** · January 19th, 2010, 8:56 AM

yea that always makes me suspicious. I'm pretty sure some people intentionally put in some fake bids.
Take a look at this for example http://flippa.com/auctions/81004/bids
Could be all clean there, but looks really fishy to me, especially considering that an average site with no traffic or revenue sold for $3k+ there..

**tke71709** · January 19th, 2010, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by DomainMagnate

Take a look at this for example http://flippa.com/auctions/81004/bids
Could be all clean there, but looks really fishy to me, especially considering that an average site with no traffic or revenue sold for $3k+ there..

That site didn't sell though, which leads me to believe that one of two things occurred.

1) The seller put some stupidly high reserve on the site and thus the first bunch of bids was from an interested buyer who kept rebidding because he was trying to hit the reserve price and not much more.

2) Shill bids were used to try to inflate the price and it didn't work out.

Hard to tell which of the two actually occurred but I like to think that no reasonably sane person would put in those bids for a brand new site with no traffic and gigantic copyright issues based on their use of pictures from the actual TV show so I vote for number 2.

**mpcovcd** · January 19th, 2010, 10:22 AM

I think's its fine that all of the bidders are private, but I think flippa should show the users trust rating next to the bidder #. We all know that the trust rating is absolutely crap, but in the event of private bidders it does show you the age of the account, if there was any previous activity and etc.

**benitez17** · January 19th, 2010, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by mpcovcd

I think's its fine that all of the bidders are private, but I think flippa should show the users trust rating next to the bidder #. We all know that the trust rating is absolutely crap, but in the event of private bidders it does show you the age of the account, if there was any previous activity and etc.

How does putting a number which you call crap next to a bidder number help the situation? I couldn't care less about my trust rating on Flippa or anyone else's rating, and when someone can outrank experienced members just by adding a bunch of unverified social networking profiles, it shows what Flippa really values.

For example, I have been a SP/Flippa member for years and I have bought multiple sites without ever backing out on a bid or scamming someone, but I believe someone who joined yesterday and added a Facebook and Linkedin profile with some amount of friends in their account would outrank me by several points. Who would you rather do business with?

All that ranting aside, if you are talking about adding a link from the rating value to the reasons for that rating, that would be a step in the right direction, because that information could be used to at least eliminate obvious shill bidders. Otherwise, it's even worse than the current poor implementation for the reasons I stated above.

**DomainMagnate** · January 19th, 2010, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by benitez17

For example, I have been a SP/Flippa member for years and I have bought multiple sites without ever backing out on a bid or scamming someone, but I believe someone who joined yesterday and added a Facebook and Linkedin profile with some amount of friends in their account would outrank me by several points. Who would you rather do business with?

I always do a quick background check on the seller. Google his username, check latest posts, itraders, latest listings etc. I guess some people might fall for the high trust rating by adding facebook and linkedin, but serious buyers still wouldn't pay much attention to it. I do agree it's quite ridiculous though, can't quite see the logic in that.

**3Six** · January 19th, 2010, 10:51 AM

The more you keep secret, the more you can fiddle. And the more you allow sellers to fiddle the more sellers you'll attract. It's a win-win situation.

I'm pretty sure some people intentionally put in some fake bids.

Yes, and the tomato frogs put in a lot of fake bids too. They'll pick a site they have no interest in buying and they'll put in $1 and $2 all the way up to $5. That way their own profile shows 100% of bids accepted and make them look like real buyers and serious players. A lot of ballcocks.

If you want buyers to gain reputation show which sites they're bidding on and which sites they bought and let me go check WHOIS and do some other research. Or is it just that you want to discourage anybody else from doing digging and want everybody to rely on your own internal mechanism for scoring reputation. What's next? Pay money to buy rep?