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Suspicious activity by another buyer.
Summary: thriftyshopper05 noticed suspicious bid activity from another buyer with over 1600 bid retractions in 30 days. eburtonlab agreed, suggesting blocking and reporting the bidder, noting the retractions likely aren't tied to a specific seller. mr_lincoln suspected a possible shill bidding scheme and advised contacting eBay's Trust and Safety Department to check for account associations. They also mentioned difficulty accessing bid retraction history on eBay.
I noticed while bidding on an auction that another buyer pushed up to my limit and then retracted his bid. I looked at his profile and saw he had over 1600 bid retractions in the last 30 days. To me, that pattern seems suspicious. Thoughts?
mr_lincoln
Mentor2 weeks ago · EditedHi @thriftyshopper05
That member is part of some kind of a shill bidding scheme. If that account is "associated" with the Selling account they can get in to trouble but you would have to contact eBay's Trust and Safety Department and ask if the accounts are "associated". Association occurs if the two accounts share the same name, address, IP address to access eBay, etc. If they are then eBay can take action. If the other account is a friend not located where the Seller is then "association" would not apply if the names, addresses and IP address access are different.
What I would like to know is how you got to that Bidder history page because eBay has expunged the Bid retraction count from the regular Feedback history, screen shot below once the image is approved by the platform provider here. I have asked eBay about that going on two-three weeks but they have not bothered answering me.
eburtonlab
Mentor2 weeks agoThat certainly appears to be a suspicious bidder -- or at least one that is not following the rules regarding bid retractions. 132 bid retractions in thirty days, and 1705 in the last year at the time of your original post are an extremely high number of retractions. I do note the historical numbers have come down since then, so perhaps most of those retractions were in the past, and the bidder is not still retracting at that rate.
Apparently that bidder was not among the top bidders at the end of the auction, so had little or no affect on the ending price. And there were no retractions in that auction.
If I were a seller and saw that bidder bidding on one of my auctions, I would block that bidder and report the bidder.
Not sure what that bidder was trying to accomplish with all those retractions, exactly, but the low percentage of bids with this seller is an indication that this is likely not a "shill" situation where the bidder is trying to drive up bids for this seller specifically. It seems this bidder bids on a lot of auctions from other sellers, and must win and pay for at least some to have the feedback numbers shown. I would guess the bidder is not a seller at all, but just someone that did not care how auctions worked or how those retractions affected sellers or other bidders.