Outbid but then won?

[bluenick037]

Hi. I was outbid in last 5 mins when bidding on an item but in the last seconds the heading st the top of the screen seemed to refresh and changed to say  I was the highest bidder and went on to win. Should I smell a rat with perhaps some devious person trying to up the price with a fake bid that they then cancelled last minute? Or am I being paranoid? We aren't talking megabucks only £50 but I hate feeling I may have been duped. 

[tressygirl]

You'll never know.

Yes,  it does happen it's called shill bidding, but equally the top bidder may just have pulled out for many other reasons,   and that leaves you the winning bidder.

Personally, be pleased ,  as you bid for the item ,  and placed the max you wished to pay,  that in the end it ended well,  with you the winner.

[papso22]

While sellers can cancel bids right up to the end of the auction, bidders can only cancel their bids if there are more than 12 hours left on the auction.

Perhaps the seller didn't like the look of the top bidder, or perhaps they were in cahoots,  you won't know.

[*help_no_brakes*]

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@papso22 wrote:

While sellers can cancel bids right up to the end of the auction, bidders can only cancel their bids if there are more than 12 hours left on the auction.

A buyer may retract a bid when there is less than 12 hours left on the auction... providing they do so within one hour of placing the bid.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/buying/bidding/retracting-bid?id=4013&st=3&pos=1&query=Retracting%20a%20...

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[bluenick037]

Thanks thats what happened I reckon.

Nick

[m25jet]

Judging from what you've said I suspect that the person who outbid you originally was a shill bidder working with the seller to artificially inflate the final price that the item sold for.  If my suspicions are right then it may well have been the case that the seller's accomplice went too far and pushed the price up so high that he/she inadvertendly became the highest bidder.  Under those circumstances it's likely that the shill bidder panicked as the clock counted down perilously close to the end of the auction, the end result being that he/she thought "Bo*bleep*ks - I'd better retract my bid or I'm going to win the item!"  If this was indeed the case then if you were the second highest bidder at that point then once the highest bidder retracted his/her bid you would automatically have been reinstated as the highest bidder, hence the reason why the page refreshed and displayed the "You Won This Item" notification once the auction had ended.

[four_mid_able]

Any item number ?

[bluenick037]

Yes that sounds about right and what I thought. Thx for the replies.

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[myriad*seller]

Did you look at the bidding history on the listing to see what happened?

Any bid cancellations will show there

Sometimes the message is just a glitch as eBay catches up with bids 

[fizz_daz]

I just won an item I don't want now through this. I now don't know what to do.

[*help_no_brakes*]

You could pay for the item... or not.

[m25jet]

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@fizz_daz wrote:

I just won an item I don't want now through this. I now don't know what to do.

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If you don't want the item anymore then just be straight with the seller about it.  Contact him/her via eBay Messages and state that you have changed your mind and wish to cancel the sale.  The seller may agree to cancel the sale, in which case you would no longer be contractually obliged to pay for the item, but if he/she does not agree to cancel the sale then you would still be expected to commit to purchasing the item.

In case you felt tempted to take the attitude of "Sod it - I'll just refuse to pay for it and the seller can relist it again", if you were to refuse to pay for the item then the seller could report you to eBay for non-payment, in which case your account would be hit with an Unpaid Item Strike.  Although one strike wouldn't affect your account, if you ended up accumulating two or more strikes for non-payment during a twelve month period you would more than likely find yourself blocked from buying from a lot of sellers on eBay, as several sellers have their selling preferences set up to automatically block timewasters whose accounts have been hit with two or more Unpaid Item Strikes within the last twelve months.