Did you realize that online auctions tops the National Consumer League's list of scams perpetrated online? Although the ebay marketplace has a wonderful track record of 99% honest transactions, you still need to be savvy to the sort of criminal activity that does happen within the ebay marketplace and stay clear of fraud from both an ebay seller and ebay buyers.



Below is a list of the top three offenses that happen within the ebay marketplace community.

1. Bid Shielding: This is when a pre-organized group of ebay bidders enter the ebay marketplace and team up to bid on a particular item, thus inflating the high bid to scare off real shoppers. At this point the lowest bidder (member of the scam) then has everyone else retract their bid and comes out winning the auction at at a dishonest low price. If you sense that bid shielding is going on within the ebay marketplace then report them immediately.

2. Descriptions are are totally misleading or photos that are obviously fake: This is an ebay marketplace sellers scam where the auctioneers falsely and unethically distort the description of the products they are selling. This criminal seller within the ebay marketplace will go as low as stealing photos from online and totally create a false product presentation. And when the buyer receives the shipment it is always a lesser classed product then was bought that does not match the auction.

3. Shilling of the Bids: This scam is perpetrated by the sellers of the ebay marketplace and is something that is hard to catch unless you were closely following the seller in question. Simply put, bid shilling is when a seller auctions off a product on the ebay marketplace and actually raises the bids himself in order to draw attention to it and have the price raised. How does one do this? They use multiple Ids or the enlist other separate bidders to enter the ebay marketplace and team up on the scam.