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.

[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.

[red_magpie]

I placed a bid on an item with 0 bids (listed at £70) seconds before the end of an auction

According to the bidding history, you placed this bid 5 days before the end of the auction!

The explanation is sure to lie in the working of eBay's automatic bidding system, and bid increments. To work out exactly what happened we would need to see the intermediate, automatic bids, which you haven't shown. It isn't even clear whether the blocked out names are the same buyer, or more than one buyer.

Buyers often get confused by the automatic bidding system, and wrongly suppose that the seller must know what they're bidding. They can't and don't.

It does sometimes happen that sellers illegally use a second ID to push up the price by bidding on their own auctions (shill bidding). However, it's unlikely that any shill bidder will place bids in the last few seconds, in case they end up winning their own auction!

[snugglasaurus]

I think you misread that. Nobody placed a bid 5 days before end of auction.

[captain*obvious]

What it might be is shill bidding. I generally view .99 bids as suspicious.

People who want their bid to win tend to bid just over a round pound, or just over the .50p

People who want to inflate the price generally bid below the round pound.

I share your suspicion but I don't think it has anything to with a bidding bot - the seller couldn't have known what your highest bid was, however, they could easily have known what the least they were willing to sell it for.

[corred]

@snugglasaurus 

There is no way for the seller to "game" the system....or have any idea what you bid

Why would nobody bid £84.99 ??  I never bid round amounts

[snugglasaurus]

Okay it is not impossible. It just seems so improbable that the most likely solution, to me, would be that it was an autobidder bot. But as you suggest, it was also my understanding that there is no way for a bot to game the system, unless they have found a new way to do through the backend of the website.