Seller uses fake buyer to drive up price, then canceled, leaving me the highest bidder on 10 items.

[darline85]

I found a seller with several similar items up for auction. I entered my max bid for one item and was told I was out bid, so I move on and enter a max bid on the next item. I do this several times in hopes that I can win one. Each time I lose the bid. After the auction ends I received 10 emails all at once, stating that the highest bidder had canceled and I am now the winner on every single item I bid on. I never would have kept bidding if I had won. I only wanted one item, not all of them. I went and read the sellers reviews and see that this is not the first time they have done this, and to top it off, the jewelry is often fake. I have bought hundreds of items from eBay, over a course of several years, and i have never had an issue paying for an item. This seems like an obvious scam. What can I do? 

[pburn]

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@darline85 wrote:

 I went and read the sellers reviews and see that this is not the first time they have done this, and to top it off, the jewelry is often fake

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Probably would've been a good idea to have done that before you bid on that seller's auctions.

Once you've placed a bid. it is binding. It might be a good idea to read up on how eBay bidding works.

You could ask the seller to cancel your bids, but, at this point, it's a request, and the seller can refuse to cancel your bids. If they refuse, you are obligated to buy the items. 

[darline85]

I didn't care to read the reviews for a $4 pair of earrings. 10 pairs of $4 earrings is different. How is it ok to tell someone the auction is over and they lost, then later say "Oops the winner canceled and you are now responsible"? I LOST the auction, then bid on a different one.

[eburtonlab]

Sorry to hear that happened to you. That's a brutal reminder that any bid can potentially wind up being a winning bid right up until the end of the auction, and to never bid on more auctions than you want to win. It also sounds like if you had looked at that seller's feedback before bidding you might have done things differently.

Going forward, one way to avoid this situation is to only bid on one auction at a time. Add all the items you are interested in to your watch list (or other list), sort them by ending time, decide in advance how much you are willing to pay for each item, and then bid only once as late in the auction as you feel comfortable on whichever item is ending soonest. When that auction ends, you will immediately know whether you are the winner or not, and then you can either pay or move on to the next auction. Bidding only once late in the auction is an effective strategy when dealing with nibble bidders, and it makes effective shilling difficult as well. If you employ this strategy, you never have to bid on more than one auction at a time, unless the auctions are literally ending within seconds of each other, or they end in the middle of the night.

Good luck.

[eburtonlab]

@darline85 

How is it ok to tell someone the auction is over and they lost, then later say "Oops the winner canceled and you are now responsible"? I LOST the auction, then bid on a different one.

Did you actually win those auctions -- were you the actual high bidder at the end? Are the items in your purchase history? If the previous high bidder cancelled bids before the end of the auction leaving you the high bidder, those items should be in your purchase history, and you are obligated to pay. Bids can't be cancelled after the auction ends.

If the email you received is from the seller, indicating that they were cancelling bids or transactions after the auctions ended or making a second chance offer to you, and those items are not in your purchase history, then you are not the actual winner of the auctions and you are not obligated to pay. Big difference.

[vikingsandpintos]

Not meaning to pile on, but you are worried if a $4 pair of earrings are real or not?

I'm guessing for $4, they won't be the highest quality on the 'net. 

At least, at that price, it shouldn't be as bad to pay for them all, and use or gift them. When I started reading your post, I was figuring you were talking hundreds of dollars, not $40 for 10 items...

[marskni-63]

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@darline85 wrote:
I didn't care to read the reviews for a $4 pair of earrings. 10 pairs of $4 earrings is different. How is it ok to tell someone the auction is over and they lost, then later say "Oops the winner canceled and you are now responsible"? I LOST the auction, then bid on a different one.

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When you bid you agree to pay the amount you bid if the high bidder retracts their bid or the seller cancels their bid.

[kitschy*loot]

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@darline85 wrote:
I didn't care to read the reviews for a $4 pair of earrings. 10 pairs of $4 earrings is different. How is it ok to tell someone the auction is over and they lost, then later say "Oops the winner canceled and you are now responsible"? I LOST the auction, then bid on a different one.

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eBay actually has a policy that when you bid, you understand that if the highest bidder retracts their bids or the seller for some reason cancels their bids, the next highest bidder will be the winner. A while back I believe that policy was mentioned on the listing somewhere.

[pburn]

Agreed. And here's a little verbiage from my Bids/Offers page right underneath the entry for an item on which I'm bidding:

"* If you have been outbid, you may still become the high bidder if, for example, the seller cancels a bid received by another bidder or lowers a reserve price."

[pburn]

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@darline85 wrote:
I didn't care to read the reviews for a $4 pair of earrings. 10 pairs of $4 earrings is different. How is it ok to tell someone the auction is over and they lost, then later say "Oops the winner canceled and you are now responsible"? I LOST the auction, then bid on a different one.

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Your decision to not read the seller's reviews is not eBay's fault.

Your not knowing the policies and procedures of auction bidding on eBay is not eBay's or your seller's fault.

This is, frankly, all on you. Really no debate about it.

[little.font.lord.leroy]

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@vikingsandpintos wrote:

Not meaning to pile on, but you are worried if a $4 pair of earrings are real or not?

I'm guessing for $4, they won't be the highest quality on the 'net. 

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I don't mean to pile on either, but if a seller advertises a pair of earrings as "sterling silver" and starts the sale at $0.25, I don't care what I end up paying for them, if the item I receive is not sterling -it's SNAD and the sellers fault, not mine in the least.

[juststuffisell]

I would give eBay a call and have them view the auctions in question to see if there was any suspicious activity taking place in the bidding. Move forward from there.

If the seller has a 30 day return, you can consolidate shipping relatively inexpensively for that many items that are that small. So shipping should be about 5 bucks or so.

Review them when you receive them. Keep the ones you want. Return the others. It will cost you about 5 dollars to return them.

Call it a day. In the future, review the feedback of a seller before you bid or buy. It is usually indicative of the quality of the experience you can expect to receive. When bidding via auction, your bid, even when you are outbid, is still subject to being a winning bid until the auction formally closes on eBay. Do not bid on more items than you are willing to buy should a case like this arise. Finally, if you don't want to wait to see if you are a winner before moving on, you need to bid within the last minute of the auction at the highest amount you are willing to pay. That way, you will know very quickly whether to move on to another item or not. Canceling bids as a bidder should only really be done when you have made an error in the amount you want to bid. You should then rebid the correct amount.

Cheers

[little.font.lord.leroy]

Sorry, darline85, but it is hard to figure out exactly what happened so we know best how to help you.

A play by play would be helpful.

1. I bid on earrings #1 on Fri. 24th, I was out bid on Sat. 25th.
2. I placed a bid on earrings #2 on Sat 25th.

etc.

On Sun 25th, all of the auctions had bid retractions.
The auctions ended on Tue 1st. and I ended up winning all of the auctions.

If the auctions are completed and in your My eBay > Purchase History, then they will be considered sold.

It does sound like it could be a scam. I would call eBay, but if you call a rep and repeat the paragraph you wrote to us, they will not help you. Most people when they call ebay with a situation like this think that it's like finding a fly in your soup at a restaurant, the louder and more you complain the quicker you will get results. The OPPOSITE is true with eBay reps. The more calm, reasonable and informed you are -the more likely things will go in your favor.

Take a minute to write out what happened play-by-play as I detailed above. Do NOT skip any step. and  just the facts in order of occurrence.

To help you before you call make a note:

Open a WordPad or TextEdit page to make notes. Title it "eBay problems" and save it to your desktop to find it easily.

Go to your Purchase History page.

Click on each auction (from this seller) starting at the bottom of the list -this should be oldest or "first" auction, but don't worry about that too much.

On the auction page, click on the bid ( [4 bids] ) this takes you to the bid history page.

Open your "eBay problems" page and type "1." and line space.

Then highlight and drag and drop* the information from that page onto your page after "1."  (* you can copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V) as well)

This bidding information information will show the start and end of the auction and when you placed your bid.

There will be a space at the bottom (or top right?) on this bids page to click to find out about any bid retractions, This will tell you the bidder's name (1****Z) in code, and when the bid was retracted.

click that link and drag and drop the information to place after the other information on your "eBay problems.rtf" page. Now you know the name of the retracter (1****Z), that's important.

Finally, just to find out, click on the bid retracter's name (1***Z) this should take you to a page of that users recent bids (in privacy mode) but it tells you how many different sellers they bid on (seller 1, seller 2, etc.) if they only bid on one seller that is suspicious.

Do this for all the auctions in question.

You may want to organize your "eBay problems" list by dragging the  items in order of first one the one you bid on first, then second one, you bid on second. With this list you should be able to tell the rep exactly what happened.

Also, go to the sellers feed back and copy and past the ones that report the same thing to your "eBay problems" list as well

When you call, make a note on that page as to the name of the Rep, ask them to spell it, and the day and time you called.

Explain what happened, as per your notes. If the rep stops you short and says something like "you are expected to pay for items if there's a bid retraction and you are the top bidder" reply:  "I understand that now, but I believe that this seller is running a scam and the bidder that retracted bids is a shill. please let me explain" Then go on with the bidders retractions on every auction and the bidders name (1****Z). Tell them to look at the bid history.

Tell them that you want all the auctions canceled. Tell them that you can't possibly pay for all of them and would not have bid on a second and third item if you thought you hadn't lost the fist bid.

If you are cool and calm, all the items should be candled without a strike to your account.

However, the rep may not be able to remove the items at that point and will want you to call back. IF so ask the rep to make a note on your account about this call.

You may wait until after a Non-paying buyer is placed on each item and they are wiped from your account page, then you will have to call back to have strikes removed from your account, reminding the new rep that the old rep left a note when you called on ___________(date and time).

good luck.

[7606dennis]

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@darline85 wrote:
I didn't care to read the reviews for a $4 pair of earrings. 10 pairs of $4 earrings is different. How is it ok to tell someone the auction is over and they lost, then later say "Oops the winner canceled and you are now responsible"? I LOST the auction, then bid on a different one.

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Actually, it is not possible for you to become the winning bidder if the auction has already closed.  However, if you are outbid that doesn't mean that you may not become the winner if the high bidder retracts or the seller cancels their bid before the auction ends.

Of course, it isn't usually a good idea to bid on anything without checking out the seller's reputation through their feedback page.

[robot-hands]

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@darline85 wrote:

 What can I do? 

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Two things only.

#1. Pay

#2. Don't pay

....and take your chances with ebay