suspicious bidding behaviour

[dukeborric1234]

HI 

bidding on an item, seller set a relatively high start price so I was confident that intrest would be low and  after 4 days no other bids came in. 

Then in the middle of the night UK time zone a zero feeback account puts in a bid  which is cancelled immediatly after becoming the top bidder. 

I am now fully expecting a bid to come in near the end of the listing that will conincendently be just below my max bid to inflate the price. 

Is this a common issue? 

[john1297576]

As suggested retract your bid and rebid near the end. Even invalid Bid Retractions are no longer reportable. Ebay's claims to detect Shill Bidding are laughable. If two or more not obviously connected accounts fixed the bidding then no one could detect it. Ebay have already removed the ability to see a bidders bid history in particular bidding on the same sellers items and number of bid retractions, so making it impossible to see suspicious patterns. Classic examples of when ebay can't cope they just remove the ability to report.

[dukeborric1234]

Thanks ... I may do that. I dislike the idea of 'playing' the system but difference between current price and my max bid is nearly £100 so worth doing