Curious bid history on eBay auction

[horseshowmom]

Do yourself a favor and get one of the proxy bidding programs commony know as snipe programs. There are a bunch out there. Some you pay for, some are free. You essentially put in your highest bid amount and the program automatically bids a few seconds before the auction ends. That would have eliminated any question as to whether the seller was bidding up his own auction. The one I'm using now is Buyertools Reminder (free). I like it because your bid is made from your computer. Other programs use their server to place the bid. You might check out esnipe, powersnipe, ezsnipe. With lack of shill policing done by ebay, its pretty silly not to use one of these programs if you do any quantity of buying at all.

I don't do a lot of bidding, but I agree with what you're saying and will probably check on some of these. If I had used one of those, the person wouldn't have had time to do all that extra bidding (it wasn't last minute, I believe it was about a hour or so before the end of the auction. I'd have to look at the times to remember for sure.). Your point is definitely a legitimate one.

 

[jessica52877]

You have to clear out your paypal balance before paying with a cc, so paypal has $0 in it. I make a deposit before I pay someone into my checking acct so I can pay with a cc.

 

[horseshowmom]

You have to clear out your paypal balance before paying with a cc, so paypal has $0 in it. I make a deposit before I pay someone into my checking acct so I can pay with a cc.

I will remember that for the future. Thanks!

 

[DMRick]

I had someone retract on my auction (I think they were trying to find out how high one of the previous bidders was willing to go). However when they retracted..all of his bids retracted, not just the highest, and so my auction which would have ended up at over $100, as people overbid the retracter, ended up going down to $25...because it also lowered each auction amount until it got to before he bid. Are you saying that he was able to only retract his last bid? I guess my auction must have looked suspicious, but the high bidder was thrilled..everyone else prob thought it was going for too much, and quit bidding. She got the item for a bargain in the end. Heck, maybe she was the shill bidder!

 

[dfularz]

My husband has sold many items on Ebay over the years, and we have had this happen to us. The seller has friends with accounts bid on the item to raise up the price. This sounds a lot like what has happened to us in the past. I would make sure to keep on Ebay about this concern. They have always been very good about handling these problems with us, but it just takes them quite a while to get back to you. Good luck with it!

 

[horseshowmom]

I had someone retract on my auction (I think they were trying to find out how high one of the previous bidders was willing to go). However when they retracted..all of his bids retracted, not just the highest, and so my auction which would have ended up at over $100, as people overbid the retracter, ended up going down to $25...because it also lowered each auction amount until it got to before he bid. Are you saying that he was able to only retract his last bid? I guess my auction must have looked suspicious, but the high bidder was thrilled..everyone else prob thought it was going for too much, and quit bidding. She got the item for a bargain in the end. Heck, maybe she was the shill bidder!

Yes, I'm not sure how, but that's what happened.

His last bid that was less than mine was at 08:26:16 PDT.

The bid that was more than mine was at 08:26:27 PDT. That bid (and only that bid) was retracted at 08:38:30 PDT.

Prior to that (on the day the auction closed), he had 8 bids beginning at 08:23:00 PDT on up to 08:24:10 PDT.

He had two other bids on days prior to the day the auction closed. Nobody else bid on it from the time he made his first bid 3 days prior to the close of the auction.

 

[horseshowmom]

Just to update:

I heard from ebay. When I contacted them, I stated that it was concerning a Bid Retraction Violation and gave them the facts.

They responded to tell me that they did not find enough evidence to prove that there was Shill Bidding. Excuse me, but I didn't report anybody for shill bidding. I contacted them concerning a bid retraction violation.

Nonetheless, I'm done. My item arrived, and I like it. Hopefully, I won't run into the other bidder on any other auctions.

 

[Mono~rail]

Unfortunately ebay's Safety & Trust department or whatever it is called isn't always the greatest. I really don't appreciate their generic canned responses. I don't get why they have policies in place when they aren't really interested in protecting their customers. They are interested in looking out for ebay, and they get away with that attitude because there really isn't any competition for them.

I sell there, but I'm only there because it is the best option.

A few months ago another seller stole 7 pictures and my item description from my listing. I had spent the $1 and change to pay for putting my pictures in my auction. The other seller stole the source code, and copied and pasted into their listing. The seller stole from me and from ebay. I reported it, but ebay didn't do anything until 2 or 3 days AFTER the listing was completed.

 

[horseshowmom]

Unfortunately ebay's Safety & Trust department or whatever it is called isn't always the greatest. I really don't appreciate their generic canned responses. I don't get why they have policies in place when they aren't really interested in protecting their customers. They are interested in looking out for ebay, and they get away with that attitude because there really isn't any competition for them.

I sell there, but I'm only there because it is the best option.

A few months ago another seller stole 7 pictures and my item description from my listing. I had spent the $1 and change to pay for putting my pictures in my auction. The other seller stole the source code, and copied and pasted into their listing. The seller stole from me and from ebay. I reported it, but ebay didn't do anything until 2 or 3 days AFTER the listing was completed.

It really is annoying. I'm like you, when I do sell there, it's because I can get a better price there than I could elsewhere. From time to time I sell empty toner cartridges, there's not much of a market for them anywhere else, so ebay is the best option (as you said).

It used to be so much better than it is now, and ebay could do something about it if they would. I'm with you, why have all of these policies and then do nothing about them.

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

horseshowmom - The bidding sounds like either someone was shilling the auction or the other bidder was just trying to run up your bid.

This happens all the time, which is why I ONLY bid by sniping. It's the only way to protect yourself against this type of thing.

 

[Lexxiefern]

This exact same situation happened to me last month. The bidder who bid me up only retracted their last bid (just when they outbid me). Thankfully I had only bid about $7 higher than the current bid, but I was ticked. I too emailed ebay (several times, since I did not hear from them after the first one). I got basically the same reply as you. I should've known better - I always always always use esnipe. I was lazy that day and it cost me a few bucks. The most aggrivating thing of all is that I still have not received the item....

 

[horseshowmom]

horseshowmom - The bidding sounds like either someone was shilling the auction or the other bidder was just trying to run up your bid.

This happens all the time, which is why I ONLY bid by sniping. It's the only way to protect yourself against this type of thing.

I agree and am going to check into it. If I had done that, this situation wouldn't have happened. Since the auction was going off while I was at church, I went ahead and did a proxy bid. That gave the other bidder the time to do what they did. It sounds like sniping is definitely the way to go.