Question A malicious bidder messing around with my listing in Member To Member Support DO NOT DELETE

A malicious bidder messing around with my listing

pcdb24 — Mon, 18 May 2020 08:17:49 GMT

Someone has decided they want to really p me off and there is nothing I can do about it.

I have a listing that someone keeps placing stupid bids on - every time I cancel and block them they open a new account and do it again.

At least 20 times so far - only listed it last night - but this is on going.

We used to be able to stop people bidding with less than 10 feedback unless they made contact first - why has this option been taken away.

Seems like we have no protection from these kind of people

Re: A malicious bidder messing around with my listing

tressygirl — Mon, 18 May 2020 08:25:17 GMT

I'm not sure that has ever been allowed, I mean you and me had less than 10 feedback once, and I'm sure we'd be angry to be blocked from wishing to buy an item.

Malicious bidding can be reported, use the Help & Contact tab above, and scroll around for the Live Chat option, as lines are down due to Covid, and report your findings.

Put these bidders on your blocked buyers list.

Re: A malicious bidder messing around with my listing

pcdb24 — Mon, 18 May 2020 08:50:28 GMT

It did used to be an option - before you were using Ebay - probably.
They could only bid if they contacted you first, it stopped all the jokers bidding for fun and not paying.
I have reported it twice and done the live chat twice for almost an hour - but still can't stop them doing it.
Had the cancel listing again.

Some people are so frustrating

Re: A malicious bidder messing around with my listing

pixiesen2012 — Mon, 18 May 2020 09:03:43 GMT

you could block bidders with 10 or less feedback who didn't have a credit card on file,

you couldn't just block everyone with 10 or less fedback

Re: A malicious bidder messing around with my listing

red_magpie — Mon, 18 May 2020 09:16:28 GMT

Wow! Someone is really determined to wreck your auction for the Land Rover. 8 separate bids, all near identical, from 8 apparently newly created accounts - all within 24 hours. There are two possible explanations for this.

The first is that this this is malicious bidding, aimed at you specifically. Only one of these members has placed a bid on any other item. However, there's no indication from your feedback record that you've had a bad transaction recently.

The second is that this was an attempt to win your Land Rover cheaply by bid shielding, in which someone invents new IDs to place fake bids on an item, high enough to deter anyone else from bidding. They then retract the other bids just before the auction ends, and place a real, much lower bid to win the item at a bargain price. This might explain why they kept on placing new bids every time you cancelled one.

If the second reason is true, the good news would be that they wanted the Land Rover, not to target you in particular. If reselling it, think about using a fixed price format, or classified ad, which stays in place until you've actually been paid.

It's frustrating that eBay has removed the previous option to block bids from buyers without a PayPal account. This was the most effective way to stop people from casually opening accounts with a false name and address.

Re: A malicious bidder messing around with my listing

pcdb24 — Mon, 18 May 2020 09:45:50 GMT

Hi Red Magpie,
They were determined - I cancelled about 15 altogether in less than 24hours Even after after re-listing. I have ended it completely now and going to put it on a classified selling site.
I was frustrated that ebay couldn't shut this person down straight away as they threatened to persist unless I took their cheap offer ( thought that was blackmail)

I do think there was more to it than someone just having a laugh at my expense - I'm told there with be some sort of investigation/report done.

But lesson learned.
Thank you for your support

Re: A malicious bidder messing around with my listing

tressygirl — Sat, 29 Aug 2020 17:26:23 GMT

Well I've been on eBay on another account since just before 2001 , I have several accounts . So blocking people with less than 10 feednback they also had to have no credit card on file, as far as my memory takes me ! @pcdb24