Shady Lane Retailers, Manufacturers, ePay, AudiogoN, Paypal or whatever. Buying and selling advice.

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RE: who wants the hassle?

Posted by Bruce from DC (B) on August 6, 2007 at 08:55:07

In Reply to: Me neither posted by Frihed89 on August 6, 2007 at 00:06:40:

Precisely.

"Shilling" in the context of an auction is fraud and is prosecuted criminally. A couple of years ago I recall reading where E-Bay worked with federal prosecutors in exposing and prosecuting shills on that site. Shilling means participating in the bidding as an agent of the seller to drive up the auction price.

So, if you call "John Doe" a shill, you're accusing him of a crime. If that accusation is false, then you've defamed him; and he can sue you.

The term also is used more loosely to describe someone who touts a certain product on a place like AA without disclosing that he is acting for the seller or manufacturer of the product. That is not a crime. In the early years of AA there was a Plinius Board member who was shilling for Plinius products here. He was outed, to the great embarrassment of the company, which did not know or approve of his conduct.

I'm not sure that there's a huge value in witch-hunting these kind of people; they get found out anyway. And, as others in this thread have recognized, lots of folks are enthusiastic about the stuff they own -- and say so at AA. There should be nothing wrong with that, and they shouldn't be branded as "shills." The posting rules do address touting by manufacturers and dealers; and those rules should be enforced.

Regarding true shilling (i.e. false bidding), why should AA be exposed even to the hassle of dealing with the consequences of people's efforts to clean up some other commercial site? AA gets no benefit from that. If a particular site becomes known as a home for fraudsters, people will stop using it. So the site has an interest in policing what goes on, as apparently E-Bay at least does.

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