Is this a new dishonest way to bag a bargain?
Summary: posydolls shared an experience where two bidders placed high bids on an item but one retracted all her bids, possibly aiming to manipulate the auction to secure a lower price. westchestervillage found the situation interesting, while christworks advised against canceling the auction without consulting eBay. roccotacodad54 and others explained that bid retractions can lower the final price, a tactic known as 'bid shielding'. Discussion ensued about eBay's rules limiting bid retraction to prevent manipulative practices. Participants shared insights on bid shielding and discussed its implications on auctions.
Two bidders were bidding fiercely on one of my items. As soon as one person bid, the other put in a higher bid. The bids were higher than I had expected, presumably putting off other bidders. Then, with seven hours to go, the first bidder retracted her bids saying she had made a mistake. When I realised what had happened, I tried to end the listing, but ebay marked it as sold to the remaining bidder at the starting price. It occurred to me that if two people in cahoots with each other mimicked this practice, they could grab some bargains. I have now marked the item as damaged until I am able to sort this out with ebay. Meanwhile, sellers beware!
eburtonlab
路2 weeks agoAs a tactic using two accounts to collude to bid up an auction at then retract a bid at the last moment, this is called "bid shielding". This was a big problem on eBay until eBay changed the bid retraction rules to limit retractions in the last twelve hours of an auction to only bids that were made in the previous hour, leaving ample time for other bidders to place a bid before the auction ends.
iamalwaysright
路2 weeks agoCan鈥檛 someone just bid shield and retract their bids after 59 minutes once every hour for the last 12 hours of the auction? Asking for a friend 馃槈
eburtonlab
路2 weeks ago 路 EditedThat might be technically possible, I am not entirely certain of all the limits of bid retractions.
But it would definitely be a lot more work for the scammer than just submitting a couple of early bids using two accounts and then withdrawing one at the end of an auction. A single stray bid submitted by a snipe service between any of the dozen retractions and rebids could undo lots of hard work on the part of the bid shielder. And were someone to actually try shielding that way, it would be much more apparent -- to the seller, to other bidders, and to eBay -- exactly what was going on. One bid and retraction could be a mistake or might be overlooked; a dozen bids and a dozen matching retractions, each an hour apart in the last twelve hours of an auction are much harder to hide or explain away innocently.
The lock on your front door will probably not stop someone who is determined to break into your house. Locks can be picked, doors can be kicked in, and windows can be smashed, after all. But all of those ways of bypassing the lock have major drawbacks: picking a lock takes time, skill and tools; kicking in doors or smashing windows is noisy and liable to attract attention. Getting caught in the act of forcing your way into a home is much harder to explain away innocently compared to walking through an unlocked door, and it carries much higher penalties as well.
eBay does not necessarily need to make bid shielding entirely impossible; it just needs to be hard enough to be impractical and unprofitable or else be easily detectable in order to discourage the practice.
mam98031
路2 weeks agoIt is important to remember that non everything is a conspiracy. Sometimes it is just what happened.
I had a situation similar to this many years ago. Two bidders bidding crazy numbers on a pattern I had for sale. It got so high that I cancelled the auction because the price they were bidding was beyond ridiculous.
This was also BEFORE the rules Ebay now has on auctions and ending them when there is a bid on them. While Ebay will allow a seller to do that, but according to the policy, the seller is still going to have to pay the selling fees. Too many sellers were using this as a safety thing if they didn't think an auction was going for enough money. They would end it even with bids. Ebay got tired of this happening as did buyers.
roccotacodad54
路2 weeks agoIf they were both competing the winning bid should be the next highest bid not the starting price. The last bid the other person made.
Unless I'm missing something here?
posydolls
OP2 weeks agoHello,
You would think so, but ebay advisor said not. However, it has been passed on to another team to investigate. Thanks for your interest.
eburtonlab
路2 weeks agoIf there were only two bids and one was retracted, the winning bidder would pay the starting bid amount.
Note that eBay limits bid retractions in the last twelve hours of an auction to only those bids placed within the last hour, severely limiting the effectiveness of "bid shielding" now.
posydolls
OP2 weeks agoOh, thank you for explaining this. I had never heard of it before. One thing I enjoy about ebay is that, at 80, I'm always learning!
eburtonlab
路2 weeks agoYou are very welcome!
christworks
路2 weeks ago@posydolls Cancelling due to damage/out of stock will hurt you worse. You are in the UK and subject to the BBE. IMHO you need to think things through before having a knee jerk reaction. You've made A LOT of assumptions. Bid shielding is what you described, but you don't know that. Rather than cancelling the order, you should spoken with eBay first if you had that concern.
westchestervillage
路2 weeks agoInteresting concept here. Sucks we can't see the names of the bidders to do an investigation on our end. Thanks for the heads up.