Cancelled bid

I cancelled 2 bids on my listing because I couldnâ€™t verify their identity. Both had had their accounts for several years, one person had bid the item up to $1000.00 which is way more than it is worth. The second persons bid was right below that.

Why do I feel guilty for doing this?

destashdays

86 View listings

Posted 2 years ago·Last reply 2 years ago

11 comments

12345jamesstamps

·2 years ago

8865 View listings

Good job. More sellers should keep an eye on their auctions daily. As a seller, we have the right to cancel bids and block buyers from further bids. A seller should also look at bid retractions of buyers.

Nothing worse than selling an auction item and buyer either doesn't pay up or something happens after it's been delivered.

ckimodog

·2 years ago

9204 View listings

@destashdays

Glad you were smart enough to see something wasn't right about this transaction. Hopefully this won't happen again, as buyers who are naru'd often just create another account and start their annoying behavior all over again. Keep your eyes wide. Scammers are everywhere.

Happy Selling

mam98031

·2 years ago

Owner / Operator19752 View listings

@destashdays

How do you "verify their identity"?

destashdays

OP2 years ago

86 View listings

Honestly, Iâ€™m still not sure how to verify their identity. They both bided the item up to $1000.00 which I thought was strange. I clicked on their eBay name since they had no feedback and they had both been on eBay since the exact same date in 2021 with zero feedback.
I cancelled one be there was no information on this person at all. Ebay agreed and they are no longer a registered user. The second one I let go for a couple days, but I had a knot in my stomach and couldnâ€™t get passed the thought that they were the same person so I deleted him as well.

I think there is something to be said about you intuition especially when selling electronics. I donâ€™t sell or buy a lot, but when I do, I want smooth transactions and not spammy people ðŸ’—.

a_c_green

·2 years ago

4200 View listings

@destashdays wrote:
I clicked on their eBay name since they had no feedback and they had both been on eBay since the exact same date in 2021 with zero feedback.

Given the other circumstances, I would definitely regard that as more than just a coincidence. As eBay has now nuked one of the accounts, it sounds like they saw something a little more concrete that they didn't like either.

Unfortunately the bid cancellations seem to have zeroed-out all the 30-day statistics that we can normally see by clicking on the disguised buyer IDs on the listing's Bid History page (you can see them as well if you log out of your selling account first), but what you were probably looking at was a bid shielding scheme. One account places a ridiculously high bid, and a second account then bids up against it. That drives the price so high that no one else will join in.

Then, near the end of the auction, one account retracts their high bid, causing the auction price to collapse down to the previous second-place (legitimate) bid plus one increment, with first place now held by the other of the two scam accounts, so the item sells for much less than it could have.

Viewing a 30-day history will generally show that at least one of the two scam accounts has an unusually high number of bid retractions. In this case I'm thinking that it was the one that's now shut down.

pls-consignments

·2 years ago

11039 View listings

Sure glad eBay's built-in user verification system is in place and working.....

.... wait, I'm thinking of something else. Never mind.

nobody*s_perfect

·2 years ago

145 View listings

@a_c_green wrote: ... what you were probably looking at was a bid shielding scheme. One account places a ridiculously high bid, and a second account then bids up against it. That drives the price so high that no one else will join in.

Then, near the end of the auction, one account retracts their high bid, causing the auction price to collapse down to the previous second-place (legitimate) bid plus one increment, with first place now held by the other of the two scam accounts, so the item sells for much less than it could have....

Bid shielding shenanigans happens a lot less since eBay set up rules about retracting bids -- during the final 12 hours of an auction, a bid can be retracted only within one hour of being placed. So bids placed earlier in the auction cannot be retracted during those final 12 hours.

mam98031

·2 years ago

Owner / Operator19752 View listings

@destashdays wrote:
Honestly, Iâ€™m still not sure how to verify their identity. They both bided the item up to $1000.00 which I thought was strange. I clicked on their eBay name since they had no feedback and they had both been on eBay since the exact same date in 2021 with zero feedback.
I cancelled one be there was no information on this person at all. Ebay agreed and they are no longer a registered user. The second one I let go for a couple days, but I had a knot in my stomach and couldnâ€™t get passed the thought that they were the same person so I deleted him as well.

I think there is something to be said about you intuition especially when selling electronics. I donâ€™t sell or buy a lot, but when I do, I want smooth transactions and not spammy people ðŸ’—.

I agree that when you have a feeling something just isn't right, it is likely something just isn't right. That part I get.

Verifying their identity, I don't. The information available to sellers on a buyer is extremely limited.

As for FB or the lack thereof, that too can be misleading. Far too many buyers and sellers simply don't leave feedback anymore. The date thing is interest though. That certainly would have given me cause for pause.

I'm glad everything appears to be working out for you.