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.

[john1297576]

The only way that anyone could possibly know the amount of your maximum bid would be if they bid high then retracted the bid. From what you show which is not the whole story this did not happen.

You would need to show automatic Bids and the brief IDs to show how many different bidders, not just what you have shown and whether there were any retracted bids at the bottom of the page.