is it possible for a seller to have a buyer run up the price in the last seconds?
i was bidding on an item and only one other person was involved. i waited till 30 seconds to the end of bidding and whola someone out of the blue put in a bid. funny thing is the person has bids almost 66% of the time with this seller. only had like 120 bids total and only 2 in the last month. looks highly suspicous to me? am i wrong that this could not occur. i did win the bid but it made me pay on the upper end of the items worth not lower where i was?
53 comments
safan80
·3 years agoThe bid history will show you the true time the bids took place. The last 10 seconds is when the bulk of the final bids will take place in an item sought after. Snipe bidding is a thing and you lost.
an-36344
·3 years agoWhat makes you think that the OP @safan80 lost the auction?
safan80
·3 years agoUsually the loser is the one crying about last second bidders. I just missed the last part of his message. If he didn't want to pay the max amount he bid he should not have bid more than he wanted to.
@nobody*s_perfect Thanks for pointing out that last part. It made me look up how old OP's account is and frankly he should not be complaining about last second bidders.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoOP was not concerned with "last second" bidders.
OP's problem was a lack of understanding/acceptance that eBay was not displaying the end of auction including "seconds", and felt that bids were accepted after the auction end time causing an increased winning price.
drboiler61
OP3 years agohe speak truth
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years agoIf he had lost, he would not have posted, "i did win the bid but it made me pay on the upper end of the items worth not lower where i was?"
soh.maryl
·3 years agoIsn't a viola a musical instrument?
But there is a French word -- voila -- which is like a term of surprise: "Voila! I found my glasses!" Sorry -- not being picky even though it seems so.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoWhola, Viola better....i was 6th grade spelling champion of my class, but there are still some words i do not know how to spell....lol...violin comes to mind as a musical insturment though. my ex told me that again was spelled again... not agian...you know i think i have disabilties now that i am 61...matter of fact i could have been diagnosed with a couple of mental issues probably...but then again...who amongest us doesn't have some mis diagnosed or just plain do not want to know diagnosed issues. unless you can get money or a parking spot/line interruption there is no benefit to telling anyone. it appears many want free this or that and that is why they proudly tell everyone they are disabled. many disabled people when i grew up challenged us that they were not disabled in the least by whatever condition they had. i worked with a one armed man years ago and a one eyed man...they never asked for anything but a job. what happened
dryophelia
·3 years ago@soh.maryl
Thanks for pointing out my error.
I did have a correction typed out when I noticed the error but it was late last night and didn’t think it was worth posting. I will ask to have it removed.
Please ignore my posts in the future.
soh.maryl
·3 years agoAm sincerely sorry. Did not mean to offend you. I find your posts always informative and interesting. Hope you won't mind if I continue to read them. But won't comment on them if that's your preference. Again, sorry.
reallynicestamps
·3 years agoThat last second buyer may actually have placed his maximum bid with an online sniping service days earlier.
The service is able to bid faster than a human being, but many buyers use them so that they can bid efficiently on an auction in another time zone.
For example, when DH was actively putting together his award winning stamp exhibit*, most of the better items were being sold in Australia, and he was 14 time zones away in Canada. With e-snipe dot com he could bid and also sleep normally.
Additionally, he did not have to worry about other collectors who had noticed that he had a good eye for better material and would follow his bids with their own, pushing up prices.
It isn't the last bidder who wins. It's the highest bidder.
Bid once, bid your maximum, and bid late.
By the way, sellers don't want to win their own auctions. They want to sell and get money. If they are winning their own auctions, they are paying fees not to be paid.
And the word is "voila". It is from the French and means "look there".
*He won an International Large Silver at Swiss World Philatelic Convention. Did you even know there is such a thing as competitive stamp collecting?
kathiec
·3 years agoAs literally everyone here has told you, the listing didn't end exactly at 12:58. It ended sometime between 12:58:00 and 12:58:59. If you'll either share a screenshot of the complete bid history or the item number we can tell you exactly when it ended. But I will tell you that in 26 years on eBay and 17 years in the forums I've never seen one instance of a bid being accepted after the listing end time. Not one. Ebay's had this bidding system since it started. Do you honestly think it would have that big a loophole?
As for eBay "researching" it, don't hold your breath unless you look good in that shade of blue.
albertabrightalberta
·3 years agoI'm not sure why you're being so secretive about the item. You've already won it so nothing will change as far as that's concerned.
You are mistaken about the ending time of the auction and the time of the other bidder's bids.
Clearly, you aren't understanding how bidding works nor how ebay shows starting, ending and bid times.
asset_liquidators
·3 years agoMaybe the other bidder was "highly suspicious" of you since each bid they placed was immediately outbid by you, so they suspected you put in a high proxy to run the bid up.
Or,
Maybe the other bidder tried to bid a 3rd time to outbid you but ran out of time.
So while more than likely there was nothing suspicious about the bidding. Both bidders may be looking at each other with suspicion and thinking the other is in cahoots with the seller.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoyes i was suspicous and for the wrong reasons as i mis interpreted the percent of bidding with the seller in the last 30 days of 66%! that seemed high to be bidding on one seller that amount but statistics are just that and when i looked closer i found that in 30 days they bid 2 times with this seller and one with another which made 66%. got that explained but to see someone be able to bid three and six seconds after 12:58pm is not acceptable and i cannot see how ebay allowed them to run up my bid at 12:57:52pm which is before the closing of the auction. if they allow bids later than the established time listed this is not good for anyone. will see how ebay responds cause i filed a complaint and i see no reasonable explaination. i did win the item but paid $7 for these being allowed past the end of auction?
earthdreamer
·3 years agoWhen I bid on an auction, I only do so within the last 3 seconds, and my bid amount is always the maximum that I am willing to bid.
So, if another bidder is sitting there with a fairly low bid, chances are very high that I will overtake their bid amount in the last couple of seconds.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoyes i do similar but give myself 30 seconds cause supposedly it is time stamped when they receive it afterr you confirmed it after you made the bid amount...not when you send it. i did decide that i would be willing to pay this and no more...so i put that in the bid and was $1 more than this individual but they were allowed to bid past the auction time of 12:58pm to .03 and.06 seconds later....which is a violation and i have notified Ebay and hope this will get returned to me approx. $7. i understand there are snipping computer programs which do these things for humans now at seconds to the end...this may have been one for all i know cause we cannot speak to one another and we are forbidden to know who the other bidders are.
yuzuha
·3 years agoMost people wait until the very end of the auction to bid in the hopes that the other bidders won't have time to counter their bids. Nothing strange about that.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoyeah i know but in this case someone new comes in within seconds of the end with a bid that makes me pay at the high end of the value of item....but in the charts this person has only 120 wins and has bid 66% of the time on this sellers items? seems quite suspicous to me. i was high bidder @ $10 and then i paid $19 after this snipper came in which had to be computer generated to be done at last seconds. i won the item cause i bid max of $20 which was the most i thought it was worth to me. first time i have ever seen this and someone who only bids for items from one seller? too many coincedences in my opinion . Ebay is looking into it and will never tell me what they find, but if there is some fishy stuff they will shut this person out they say? all i can say is that we can be dupped by unscruptous sellers trying to get the max out of items for sale. this one happened to be the first item i ever purchased out of america. GBP. if you see some thing fishy just send ebay a note.
nh7235
·3 years agoIf this person had a whola of 3 bids total this month
-- and 2 of those bids where with this seller @drboiler61
-- that's a whola of 2 out of 3, which is 66% if you do the math.
Not a whola going on there, so that's hardly suspicous. And it's normal for a whola to snipe just below the retail price -- a strategy to limit their risk to pay full retail -- should there be a whola of bids near the ending time.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoyes your right about percentage. ebay doesn't tell us how many bids in last 30 days though? if a auction ends at 11.58 pm and a person bids at 11.58.03 and .08 is that acceptable? thats what the official bidding says?
ms.rodriguez*
·3 years agoWhat was the official time that the auction ended. I doubt that it ended at 11:58 pm exactly. Can you post the item #? I have never seen an auction where someone won with a bid AFTER the auction officially ended.
drboiler61
OP3 years agomarch 19 2023 @ 12:58pm...not 12:58.03 or 06 seconds later. i made a dispute and Ebay is looking into how this was possible...but i won the item yet it costs me $7 more. most people may have overlooked this but since i was so surprised that someone was snipping at the end...not like we all put a higher bid price just in case...but the person was not the only other person to bid on the item 8 days earlier...it was someone new...not that that doesn't happen or couldn't but the site did not show them as the highest bidder and rightfully so since they made the bid after the auction was closed. either way this will get sorted out. i origianlly thought this person was bidding up the item for the seller because of the statistics that they had in last 30 days bid on items with this seller 66% of the time...what i missed was that they made 2 bids with this seller in one day only (30 days) and that is why it was so high. statistics are important but if read wrong you can get the wrong impression. i was wrong about that i can see now. but not about the end of auction.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoNo bids were placed after the auction ended.
eBay often no longer shows "actual" end time. It truncates to the nearest minute in most displays.
click on bids will show when the actual end time was
clicking on a bidders ID will show bid history....... as nobodys posted ........ that is 30 days
drboiler61
OP3 years agoso actually i called ebay cause this buyer drove my price up 3 and 6 seconds after the auction ended. they are going to rersearch how this happened.
kathiec
·3 years agoEBay CS reps will tell you anything to get you off the phone. They aren't going to research anything. There's nothing to research. As other posters have explained, eBay truncates the time ended in most places it displays. But if you look at the very bottom of bid history it shows you when the auction started, in hh:mm:ss format. The auction ends at the exact same time, to the second.
If you'd like to post the item number we can tell you exactly, to the second, when the listing ended. But absolutely nothing you've mentioned so far points to anything other than how bidding works.
dryophelia
·3 years agoIt is most certain that there will be no ‘research’ and no follow up. Those reps will say anything to get you off the line.
If you post a screenshot of the entire bidding details page, most importantly the starting price and time and the time of the winning bid, we will show you how this ended the way it did.
In all my years on eBay, I have never seen bidding after the auction ended. Never. Not even on eBay’s glitchiest days.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agonot yours, but a typical example of how eBay does not display the actual end time.
Here is the bid page from an ended listing showing the truncated end time with bids that appear to be placed after that time, and the ended listing page showing the "true", "to the very second" end time.
 
 
drboiler61
OP3 years agothe auction listed was to end 3-19-2023 @ 12:58pm. there were two bids by this individual only, that caused my purchase price to go up $7 after 12:58pm because of my automatic bid that i put in the system @ 12:57:30 and 12:57:52 and both bids are listed on the website as 12:58:03 & 12:58:06. never thought is was possible but i have notified them and there technical team will be getting back with me to tell me why this is allowed or if it will stand. i won the item but paid more than i should have and paid the seller the final price by Ebay so they can send it asap. i did look at bidders history in 30 days and it said this buyer has bid 66% of the time with this seller so i assumed they might be in collusion...but he only bid twice in 30 days which explains 66%. i did figure out that it was all okay...but soon realized what i missed and that was the late postings...which never can be allowed.
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years agoIf the top of the bid history shows that it ended at 11:58, then it could have ended at any time from 11:58:00 to 11:58:59. You can look at the BOTTOM of the bid history to see the exact start time of the auction, which will show the full time including the seconds. In this case, it must have ended at 11:58:08 or later.
The bidder's profile DOES show how many bids in the past 30 days.
yuzuha
·3 years agoThere is still absolutely nothing suspicious here. It sounds like you don't understand how bidding works.
If I bid on 3 items in the past 30 days and 2 of them are from one seller, it will show me as having a 66% bid percentage on that seller's items because 2 of the 3 bids I have placed are on their items. Does that sound suspicious at all? I think not.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoyes you were right and i was being too suspicous. it is correct on the 66% cause it was only 2 bids in 30 days. however what i did uncover was that in the final listing of all the bids this person was allowed to bid past the deadline of 12:58pm on 3-19-2023 with 12:58:03 & 12:58:06 which drove the price up $7 to within a $1 of my max bid...i made my last minute bids at 12:57:30 & 12:57:52...how they can allow anything past 12:58 is beyond me...so i did file a complaint and the technical team will be getting back with me on what they are going to say or do. i won the item in question within the time stamps but was charged more than i should have been based upon the end of auction. i am not saying this happens alot but its the first time i ever saw it happen...would not believe it if it did not happen as i told you.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoIt's possible, but eBay supposedly tracks such actions.
I bid auctions "out of the blue" in the very last few seconds.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoi may do also, but this buyer placed the order like less than 15 seconds (maybe a snipper bidder or a computer system designed to bid last minute) this could be set just below an items value so the item would not sell for less and would get the most out of the item or not sell it at all. lets say i was high bidder at $10 then whola another bidder who had made no previous bids shows up and bids (only 2 bids which included the automatic bid of $16, then $18 actually shows it was .03 and .06 seconds past auction deadline...my last bid was for $20 max at 30 seconds left on auction. i paid $18.50 cause its always .50 more than last bid if no other people are higher. when i looked at the bidder they had like 120 purchases lifetime and in last 30 days made 66% of there bids for items with this seller? that is suspicous in my opinion....only ebay can see how many bids and when. they won only like 2 items in last 30 days too? So i had increased my bid in the last 30 seconds or less to $20 and then this person shows up twice the leader and the system says auction is closed and ebay is deciding the winner. i won and then saw what happened. the only other person involved did not increase there original bid from 9 days earlier. i hope there is nothing fishy about this but ebay is going to investigate internally and whatever they find i will never know of course. maybe i caught someone?
soh.maryl
·3 years agoWhat is "whola"?
drboiler61
OP3 years agoyes they do look for these but that is why if you suspect to let them know so they can put a tracker on them and look back to see if there is any basis. i do not know specifically that this did happen, just was so coincedental and never seen this happen before. i agree that out of the blue or the last seconds is the best approach...that is why i bid 30 seconds before the end of auction. BTW i also filed a complaint because the bidding ended according to the site at 12:58pm but the site allowed this individual to bid at .03 and .06 seconds after 12:58 which is a violation and should not have happened? we all believe this is impossible but it happened and i did file a complaint cause this allowance caused my bid that was listed at 12:57:30 &.52 seconds to pay $7 more now. so i will see if Ebay makes up the difference since i paid the seller and its being sent to me. I did win the auction.
albertabrightalberta
·3 years ago30 seconds before an auction ends is way too soon. Snipers will beat you every time if you bid that early.
It doesn't sound like shill bidding at all and it's also 99.9999% unlikely that any bid was placed after the official ending time of the auction.
Although others have requested that you post the item number, you haven't done so so it's impossible to show you how you are mistaken.
Please post the item number.
drboiler61
OP3 years agowill be displaying it as soon as the item is in the mail. i want to know and you all too what is right. i did not ever believe that if an item is listed at ending at 12:58pm pst that that also incorporates all the way to 12:58:59. i mean that is almost a minute more of time?
itscalledapostingid
·3 years agoAuctions run for exactly 7 days or whatever duration is chosen when it's listed.
So if the seller lists a 7-day auction at 12:58:59 that is when it starts and it will end exactly 7 days later.
(Ebay does not round it off to end on the minute.)
drboiler61
OP3 years agothere was no seconds on the original listing, so how can they allow a second or 59 more?
woodland_gnome
·3 years agoThey don't "allow" additional time. The time DISPLAY is truncated. You are assuming a precision that isn't indicated. hh:mm is not the same thing as hh:mm:00.000. eBay truncates (rounds down) its time displays to the lower second, minute, or even hour depending on the page you are looking at and in some cases how much time remains. hh:mm could be anywhere from hh:mm:00.000 to hh:mm:59.999. That's OK on search results and the like, but they also truncate to the minute on the main Listing Page for the auction, and just recently started doing it on the Bid History Page for the actual endtime (but the bids are still to the second, confusing things further).
Go back to the Bid History (where you found the bid time) and look down at the Starting Price line and you will see that the starting time displayed there was less than or equal to x days (the "Duration" also displayed at the top) earlier to the second. The auction ends x days to the second after the start time (I'm not sure whether that is at the end of that clock second or if it is at the anniversary of the fraction of a second it started to the fraction of a second that eBay keeps a record of on the timestamp to break ties that came in during the same second; I know it is not at the beginning of the second because bids are accepted that bear the same second display as the Start Time).
For an active auction with a bid you can calculate the endtime to the second from the starting time and duration displayed on the Bid History Page IF there has been a bid (there is no direct display of the endtime of an active auction on that page, only for completed auctions).
itscalledapostingid
·3 years agoAlso you should NOT post the item number here. It would be a violation of the ebay community rules to post another user's item here in this case (accusing someone of wrongdoing.)
You could post a screenshot of the bidding history if it doesn't reveal the seller name or item number.)
albertabrightalberta
·3 years agoNot true.
The OP is making a claim that is inaccurate and be easily shown if he would simply post the listing or the bidding history. (Automatic bids wouldn't hurt either.)
itscalledapostingid
·3 years agoThe OP would be breaking the rules by posting the item number of a member they are accusing of wrongdoing. (I know it would be proven that no wrongdoing occurred. )
One of the things not allowed to be posted:
"about another user’s listings or user IDs to tarnish their reputation (e.g. “naming & shamingâ€) or otherwise calling the community to action. NOTE: It is appropriate to respectfully comment on an item or listing shared by a seller looking for feedback about their listing or the item listed "
I have seen users suspended from the community for doing so. One user wasn't too happy about it either because they only posted the item number after being prodded to post it by others. They had to wait 30 days to post again about an international shipment they believed they had been scammed on.
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years agoIn the bidder profile, the percentage shown for "percent of bids with this seller" is only about their bids placed in the past 30 days.
So if they have only bid on a couple of items in the pat month, or if they have placed multiple bids on one item, that percentage could be very high with no questionable bidding at all.
drboiler61
OP3 years agoso i bid against another person for 9 days and 30 seconds left in auction i put in a bid around say $20 which was the high end of value not the $10 that i was highest bidder at. i decided to put the highest i was willing to pay or risk loosing it. then out of the blue this new person bids once at $18 and the auction closes. ebay says its determining the winner. So the printout shows this persons bid of $16 then $18 ...3 and 6 seconds after the end of auction...then ebay assigns me the winner over this persons highest bid by 50 cents which was 50 cents less than my max bid. i won but when i looked at the other buyer he had a lifetime of 120 and has bid in the last 30 days 66% of the time with this seller? seems quite suspicous. computers are very good at concealing a program that is designed to maximize a sellers sale prices. if its true its a shame, i wish it were not but it seems very suspicous and only if all Ebay buyers pay attention they might not catch these guys doing bad.