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Shill bidding?
I'm bidding on an item, and somebody outbid me. Then I get a notification that they retracted their bid, making me the highest bidder again - at my max bid price. When I look at the bid history, it looks like this person bid until they passed my highest bid, then retracted their bid. I thought this was suspicious so I click on the bid history of the person and they have 11 bid retractions in the last month! They also have 69 retractions in the last 12 months! eBay policy does not let me report somebody for suspected shill bidding because they have an "automatic" monitoring system to detect it. But 11 retractions in the last 30 days is obviously a red flag.
I guess my question is, shouldn't ALL their bids be retracted and not just the last one? That would prevent shill bidding. All this does is drive up the cost for the winner. And they won't even let me report it? It feels like a scam.
eburtonlab
Mentor11 months agoI guess my question is, shouldn't ALL their bids be retracted and not just the last one? That would prevent shill bidding.
That might make shill bidding a little bit harder to accomplish, but it would not actually stop a determined shill bidder, who, by definition, must already know how to have more than one eBay account.
One thing that makes shill bidding largely ineffective is bidding your maximum amount once, as late in the auction as possible, rather than bidding early and leaving your bid exposed for the shill bidder or anyone else to bid up, to exceed and then to retract the last bid.