Multiple retracted bids on an auction

Question

A big-ticket item that I am bidding on has had another bidder (the same one) jump in with a higher bid three times, only to retract it immediately (as in, a minute or so). Should this be a red flag that someone is working with the seller to artificially drive up the price?

woodland_gnome · Answer

That might be the seller shilling, that might be just a bad bidder who thinks it gives him/her some advantage or just likes playing games. The way to keep people like that from probing your hidden maximum is to not have it out there for minutes, hours, or days. The closer you can RELIABLY place your one TRUE maximum bid to the end the less time anyone has to probe your hidden maximum to position his/her bid just above (or worse just below) your hidden maximum.

Note that the countdown you see is NOT a real-time feed of the time remaining and is not reliably accurate for placing a bid in the last few seconds (it does not take latency into account, which it would need to both ways). I highly recommend use of a "sniping service" (do a websearch, there are reliable and secure one with free use for limited bidding or different fee schedules to match your bidding frequency and ratio of wins to losses). Not only is it more reliable than planning to snipe manually, it forces you to calculate your TRUE maximum well in advance and bid that, which is the ONLY winning strategy on an eBay auction. Trying to react to bids coming in, especially in the last minute, is the second worst strategy (bidding MORE than the MOST you are willing and able to pay is the worst).