Bidder reneges on final bid so none count and I only get starting bid?

[broncowrestlingcoach2011]

My auction had 2 bidders that bid the price up over $100 more than the starting bid. The one who wins canceled their last bid and all their bids went away leaving me with one bidder and the first bid price. Doesn't seem right. I'm sure I missed out on a lot of bids because these two went back and forth in a bidding war and then one canceled. I always thought that if I bid on an item, I am responsible for the price of that bid if I win. Guess I'm wrong.

[mr_lincoln]

@broncowrestlingcoach2011   I would suggest you contact eBay and ask them if those two IDs were "associated" ... what you described is a form of Shill bidding and bid retraction.  You are right, the two IDs can bid the price higher then anyone else would pay then cancel bids from one ID towards the end leaving the lower bids in the winning position.

If those IDs are "associated" you can Report the Buyer ...

Mr. L

[coolections]

None of you 4 ended items show any bid retractions?

[7606dennis]

Are you saying he retracted his bid or did he not pay after the auction closed?

[a_c_green]

---

@mr_lincoln wrote:

@broncowrestlingcoach2011   I would suggest you contact eBay and ask them if those two IDs were "associated" ... what you described is a form of Shill bidding and bid retraction.  You are right, the two IDs can bid the price higher then anyone else would pay then cancel bids from one ID towards the end leaving the lower bids in the winning position.

---

Actually the term for this is "bid shielding." Shill bidding comes from a fake bidder who's working on behalf of the seller. In this case, it's two buyer accounts working together to scam the seller by winning it for much less than its usual price.

One puts in a sky-high bid, then the other puts in counterbids to push the selling price up to match it, thus showing a current price higher than anyone else would want to bid. At the last moment, one of the two retracts his bid(s), causing the auction price to collapse back down to wherever it was before this all started, with the winning bidder taking it for a lower-than-normal price. 

To the OP: take a look at the total number of bid retractions for each of those two accounts. (It would be on the buyer's feedback page, on their Feedback as a Buyer tab, right side, about halfway down.) I suspect that one may show a ton of retractions but not many purchases. The other may show many purchases but zero retractions. For everyone other than the seller himself, you can see the numbers by clicking on the disguised buyer IDs on the item's Bid History page.

At this moment I'm not seeing a recently-sold item from the OP showing bid retractions, but I've noticed that sometimes it can take many hours before a sale shows up in a seller's Sold list visible to others.