Incredibly Suspicious Bid - Bidder Bot?

[snugglasaurus]

Hi There,

I encountered some incredibly suspicious behaviour on an item I bought. I placed a bid on an item with 0 bids (listed at £70) seconds before the end of an auction for £85, then 3 seconds later somebody places a bid for £84.99.

Is this not incredibly suspicious and clearly indicative of some kind of bidding bot? Nobody would ever place a bid for £84.99 unless the owner of the item is able to game the system and know what people are bidding to maximise their return.

Anonymised screencap below:

What is best to do from here? From his profile + feedback it looks like they really do send the item. I just think they are applying some dodgy practices to make some more money unethically.

[*vyolla*]

Looks okay to me, you both put your bids in exact same time and yours was higher so won.

[snugglasaurus]

And you don't find it strange that he bid £0.01 less than I did?

[corred]

They placed an £84.99 bid 4 seconds before the end of the auction.....thats not how sniping works.......the chances are the other bidder did not even realise anyone else had bid until it ended......their screen would not have updated in time to show it

[snugglasaurus]

If you guys really think this is legitimate then I will believe you 🙂 I am sure you have seen a lot more ebay than I have. To me it just seems so improbable that somebody would bid £0.01 less than me UNLESS it was some kind of auto bidder bot. That just seems so crazily improbable.

[corred]

There is no way for any bot to know what you bid....especially as you bid in the last few seconds.........no auto bidder or bot would have received the information either.....had the other person bid £87 they would have won.......if you had bid £83 then they would also have won

[snugglasaurus]

If a bot DID have access to that kind of information it would be entirely possible for it to make a bid in 3 seconds. But if we are sure that having access to that info is impossible then I guess I just got super unlucky!

[tobiasd4]

Other bidder probably used a snipe bidder, it automatically places their maximum bid in last second of auction, if it is highest bid, they win, if not, no time to rebid.