Bid Cancellation Scam | Selling

oat_351 · 2024-11-09T17:21:24.405000Z

Old-school (1999) seller returning to eBay after long hiatus. I've noticed that the new liberalized offer cancellation policy has led to a new scam from buyers. In the last month, this has happened three times. For two of them, I was able to cancel the auction before it ended. Here is how it works:1) An auction for an item (actual value for demonstration purposes $30) starts out with a low starting price. It receives a few bids in the early days, going up to maybe $5.00. 2) A fraudulent bidder comes along and bids a wildly high amount, like $50.00. With a second account, they bid $51.00. Now the price exceeds what a normal buyer would pay for a $30.00 item. 3) From that point on, no other buyers can place bids within the reasonable ($5.00 to $30.00) range, because that price has been exceeded. The system won't allow a buyer to bid anything less than $50.00, which no reasonable buyer would do for a $30 item. 4) Most buyers stop watching the item and move on. No new buyers follow it, either. 5) As late as possible, the fraudster cancels their high bid. The price drops back down to $5.00. 6) With no new bidders, and buyers no longer watching the item, it generates very little interest before selling at a vastly below-market-value price.7) Success! The scammers win again. Now that this has happened three times, my only reaction has been to cancel the auction and ban both user accounts from accessing my listings again. But this needs to be done. Sadly, eBay Customer Service doesn't even have a way of reporting bidders who aren't the winning buyer.There needs to be a way to report suspected fraudulent accounts. Surely if you provided two customer names, the system would be able to quickly compare IP addresses, location codes, time stamps, etc. to come up with a reasonable probability of fraud.

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