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Annoymus Bidding
I canceled a bid in an auction due to bidders remaining anonymous. I also contacted the seller and he said his screen showed no "anonymous bidding" just mine. Now when I contacted Ebay about this they were very reluctant to give me any information. Sort of like, should not be asking those questions.
SEEMS LIKE EBAY IS NOT ABOVE BOARD.
6 comments
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoIf you mean a***b type aliases, that began as a reaction to a scam. The bidder detail summaries you get when you click the bidder's alias was started to give some information to spot evidence of shilling since users couldn't do an Advanced Search by User ID (since you no longer could see the ID) to see what else the bidders were bidding on (which was still a thing back then). Eventually it evolved into a general increase in privacy for users (e.g. getting rid of Advanced Search by User ID). Scammers would send emails to losing bidders making fake Second Chance Offers (lists of email addresses of user IDs were compiled from various sources and available where scammers shop).
If you mean "Private listing--bidders' identities protected" that's another story.
In either case you see your own ID because you are the one looking (while logged in under that ID). The seller can see all the IDs (so s/he can manage bidders, cancelling bids and blocking bidders likely to cause problems).
You did not have a valid reason to retract your bid and violated eBay rules by doing so.
wpgbob
OP2 years ago"valid reason to retract your bid and violated eBay rules by doing so". Sir, Ebay violates their policies on a daily basis. If at any time I see this type of bidding I am going to cancel my bid. 100% of the time. I know I am in the right and ebay does not care. You know who looses! It's the sellers.
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoYou are nowhere near "in the right" and you promised to follow eBay rules, not your own. And it IS the sellers who lose when buyers don't follow the rules and make invalid retractions.
mudshark61369
Mentor2 years ago@wpgbob,
If you think about it all bidder's IDs are anonymous because the usernames are in the a***b format. Mine has shown up as S***9. If the auction you bid on had in place of a username "Private Listing, bidder's identities protected". There is nothing wrong with that. Though Private listings are not normally used for common items, usually they are for high end art or collectibles, personal hygiene, medical, or adult items.
"I also contacted the seller and he said his screen showed no "anonymous bidding" just mine".
Given the seller's reply it sounds like they are a newbie. On a seller's bid history page they see full usernames. When you look at a bid history only your ID is given in full all the rest are scrambled. Did you check the seller's feedback profile page before placing the bid? If not do that now and click on the as a seller tab to see how much selling they have done. Maybe they have been selling awhile but not in the auction format, so they don't understand what Private Listing really means.
As for customer service's "non answers" those reps may not even know what you meant about anonymous IDs or bidder identities. They only know what info is given to them in the play book ebay gives the Call center they work for. If you looked up an ebay customer service phone number online, you were not speaking to a real ebay rep.
wpgbob
OP2 years agoThanks for the response. In your opinion why does ebay allow this. I am buying and selling trading cards worth less than $20. In any event when this occurs I cancel the bid. I will do this going forward.
gosimus
Mentor2 years ago@wpgbob
@mudshark61369 wrote "click on the as a seller tab to see how much selling they have done"
When you get to the feedback "as a seller" be sure to change the sort to Most Recent. eBay, for some unknown reason, decided to make the default sort to most relevant. Everybody disagrees with this decision. I have opened members' feedback pages and, on the most relevant sort, zero feedback was displayed. Only when I changed the sort to most recent did any appear, mostly oldish feedbacks.