Cheated by two buyers in tandem

[pelican1454]

I have just been cheated by two buyers operating together and ought to flag the way they did it up for everyone. I put a silver trophy up for sale and in the last two days began to see bids from two buyers. They escalated from £40 up to £65 in 5 jumps. Then, on the day the sale finished, the top bid was withdrawn because of a "keying error." I was concerned at what was going on and opted the option to sell then to the highest bidder. Sounded safe but somehow all the bids has disappeared except the lowest starting one from the other buyer. It cost me £25. This needs looking at but of course Ebay have no interest.

[red_magpie]

It's a well known scam known as bid shielding.

It wasn't a great idea to provide such a clear tutorial on how to perform this scam. Perhaps you could think about editing your question to remove the step by step detail.

You can report the retracted bid as an invalid bid retraction. It might even be worth contacting customer support as it's actually much more than an invalid bid retraction - as I said, it appears to be a well known scam. They ought to be looking at both bidders involved - who are probably one person.

[pelican1454]

Thank you. Very useful if disappointing. I am a bit naive in these things.
But how do you get Ebay’s interest?

Brian

[*vyolla*]

I've just looked at the bid history and can't see any concrete dodgy stuff going on there, it says that your trophy sold for £40 and you have one bid retraction, which in itself isn't unusual.

The buyer who has retracted the bid does have history of 10 bid retractions in a year, but without taking a good look at what they've been bidding on we can't see what is going on there, for sure. You could report them for invalid bid retraction, that would be worth doing.

I’ve found that the easiest route to contact eBay Customer Services is via the link below where you can request a call back:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/eua?id=5275&mkevt=1&mkpid

[pelican1454]

I did as you suggested - many thanks. I got a call back from a lovely lady who had no idea what I was trying to talk to her about. She passed me to a charming Irish man who understood exactly what I meant but it was not his department. He said the best idea was to make a formal complaint through the help/contact button at the top of the account page. That did work.

There was an interesting bid history on the site before the sale, showing 5 or 6 bids from the two accounts that scammed me, showing the price moving up through £50 and £60 and probably putting off other buyers.