Is this Shill bidding? - ZeroFeed Back Buyer bidding

[dow-141]

I came across a Seller who appears to be using shill bidding. He has 5 items listed, and every single one of his item the price has been bid up by  the same Zero Feedback buyer.

This Zero Feedback Bidder has only bid on this guys items, and they have bid multiple times on the same item increasing the price for no apparent reason.  All the bidding happened on the same days too ( Jun. 8 & Jun 9). 

[esclyons]

it may look suspicious,  to us looking at it from outside the auction.. Only the seller and the bidders, and eBay know for sure.. And ebay does have sophisticated software to catch this sort of thing, remember shill bidders only want to drive up the price, but never win the item.   Time will tell, if the shills win, and the items get relisted. or if eBay actually believes there is shill bidding going on.. the seller will get suspended.

[reallynicestamps]

If the bidder is merely naive, he is getting an email from eBay with each bid, telling him he is the high bidder but not yet the winning bidder.
If the item opened at $10 and he bid $15, he would see his bid as $10.
If he rebids at $20, and he is still the only bidder, he would see his bid as $10.
And so on and so on.
He would be puzzled and confused.
However many bids he makes, the High Bid should only rise if another seller is also bidding.
There is also a pretty good chance that he will stop bidding and if he does win, he will not pay, thinking he is being scammed.

As already mentioned, a shill does not want to win. He wants you to win at the highest price he can push you to.

A poor strategy since it is not the last bid but the HIGH bid that wins, and most bids arrive in the last few seconds of the auction.
Look at the bids in chronological order, rather than the default by amount.