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? 

[m25jet · Accepted solution]

Personally I've only ever experienced it once, although at that point I had yet to place my bid.  The  bidding was really high prior to my own bid being placed, but when I placed my own bid in the dying seconds I won the auction for less than the highest bid that I'd seen beforehand!  After paying for the item further analysis of the bidding history showed that the highest bidder had retracted his/her bid literally seconds before the end of the auction, the end result being that I won the item for substantially less than I would have had to pay had that bidder allowed his/her bid to remain.

With regards to bidding a price up in order to find out a rival bidder's highest bid, if a seller was going to get an accomplice to shill bid the price up I wouldn't have expected him/her to do it in this way, as if the seller was indeed trying to find out your maximum bid then it would look far too obvious.  It may well just be the case that the seller was a bit spooked by a newly registered bidder with zero feedback suddenly bidding with an offer that resulted in him/her becoming the highest bidder, especially if it was a high value item that you were bidding on.  Some sellers can be a bit apprehensive about selling to buyers with newly registered accounts and zero feedback, so if that's all it was then you probably haven't got a lot to worry about, other than the possibility that one of your opponents who may be waiting until later to place a bid in the dying seconds may well have seen your maximum bid and now knows how much to bid in order to outbid you.

Going forwards the best way to prevent this type of thing from happening to you is to refrain from bidding early on in the auction, and submit your bid right at the end of the auction.  That way nobody else can try to place a really high bid and revoke it in order to find out your highest bid, and if you do decide to place a bid in the dying seconds and it subsequently becomes the highest bid then the closer to the end of the auction you can get your bid to register the less chance there is than your opponents will be able to submit a higher bid before the end of the auction.  Having said that, however, it's not necessarily the last bid that wins - it's the highest bid placed, regardless of when the winning bidder submitted his/her bid.

[dukeborric1234 · Accepted solution]

thanks for your time spent replying.
i agree its more likely a spooked seller.
i am aware of the benefits of bidding in last few seconds but figured i could hold off potential bidders by making it seem unattractive due to the sellers highish starting bid.

oh well fingers crossed.

[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

[red_magpie]

EBay claims to have systems to detect shill bidding, as this practice is known. It is no longer even reportable to eBay.

Many of are skeptical about this, as we are still getting questions about continued shill bidding. EBay has always seemed less vigilant about shill bidding than it is, for example, about fee evasion. The fact that eBay itself benefits from the higher prices - and higher fees - resulting from successful bidding couldn't possibly have anything to do with this.

The only way to protect yourself against shill bidding is to bid during the closing seconds of the auction, when shill bidding could result in the seller winning their own auction.

In your particular case what you could do - and would be within eBay's rules on bid retraction - is to retract your current bid, and bid again in the last few seconds.

[dukeborric1234]

Thanks, I've always been a little concerned by this practice didn't realise eBay weren't even trying to pick up.

[fredtech001]

I've come across a similar practice with a Car Dealer, South-UK.  Posts cars with no reserves, low start price  Towards the end of the auction, bids appear from members with 2 or 3 feedback's, obviously their own accounts, that out bid the current winner.  This either jacks the price up, if Auto-Bidding is selected by the original bidder, or they win the car themselves.   If the latter, the car re-appears on their listings the following week, and this goes on till they eventually sell it to someone.    Very dubious practice, I'm surprised E-Bay allow this as there seems to be a few comments in their Feedback identifying this practice.