Hey everyone - The following information is NOT meant to slander or slam ANYONE in any way but I do feel that potential ebay buyers of some particular ferret items need to be aware of a "shilling" scam that occured when I bid on four different ferret clay figurines - all sold by the same seller. Just an FYI ..."Shilling" is when a buyer deliberately uses some kind of secondary registration, aliases, family members, friends, or associates to artificially drive up the bid price of an item. (This is also known as bid padding.) Here is how I realized this had happened: I started bidding on 4 different ferret clay figurines from buyer MINKEY98 where all the bids began around $7.00 and on three out of four items, I was consistently outbid by FIVELOVES until the prices were in the mid $20 range within minutes. Only the fourth item I bid on actually had other people bidding on it (actually just one other person besides myself and FIVELOVES). I thought that to be very odd and then, within 24 hrs., I notice that on ALL FOUR items I had bid on, FIVELOVES' bids had all been cancelled because FIVELOVES was found to be "not a registered user" according to Ebay. So, that left ME as the new highest bidder when, in reality, I had stopped bidding after FIVELOVES had placed her highest bid. Ebay has since allowed my 2 of 4 of my bids to be cancelled after they investigated my complaint and rightfully so because shill bidding is strictly forbidden on eBay. I have filed another complaint with Ebay asking them to retract the other two bids as well (why they didn't initially, I don't know) because I simply do not want to do any further business with this seller whatsoever! PLEASE UNDERSTAND that I am not, in any way, suggesting that anyone should NOT buy from this buyer (minkey98) - I am merely wanting everyone out there to just be informed about what happened and how this seller is operating on Ebay so that you might avoid the same problem if/when you see the same pattern happening. Honesty, I REALLY like the products this seller is offering and would like to buy from this seller but I will not tolerate these kinds of business practices. Do whatever you wish with the information I've provided - I'm just the messenger! Happy buying! Jennifer, Sasha & Snowy (now with Snowflake and Jackson) - the Fabulous Four :-) [Moderator's note: Sounds like there's more to it -- how could an unregistered person bid to begin with? Please let us know how it all turns out. BIG] [Posted in FML issue 4667]