Higher bids ignored by eBay or scam?

[timeline-art]

I sold an item and almost immediately received 3 messages from 3 different ebayers saying that they had put a higher bid on for the item and their bid was ignored, therefore I sold the item for less. Is this a new scam? Or has eBay got some serious glitches? 

[tobiasd4]

I doubt it is a SCAM.

Bidders may not have had bid accepted due to Internet speed or bid was not not a high enough increment above winning one.

[timeline-art]

Thank you, but the three individual messages were for bids at about £50 more than I sold the item for. It's disappointing that I missed out on the additional bids, and odd that it happened with three different people. 

[red_magpie]

There's nothing obviously suspicious about the bidding activity. This was a 10 day auction with five bidders and no retractions. The winning bid was placed a few seconds before the auction ended so there was no last-minute outage to prevent bids being placed.

It seems unlikely to have been an eBay glitch. If anything is suspicious it's that three bidders should all claim to have bid double the price the item sold for.

It's not unknown for two or more  bidders to work together to manipulate the outcome of an auction. It's possible that eBay might now be using smart software to block suspicious bidding activity.

[timeline-art]

I agree it seems suspicious to receive three messages all exclaiming their bids were not accepted, I thought it was most unusual. However,  I am still in correspondence with them. To answer your other point, It wouldn't be unusual for the camera to fetch double the amount it did actually go for and I was disappointed at the amount it fetched. Doesn't seem to be any winners on this occasion. 

[red_magpie]

If relisting it, think about starting the listing at or near to the minimum amount you would want to accept.

That way, no mount of bid manipulation could cause the camera to be sold for less than the starting price.