I’ve been on eBay a long time, since the days where you mailed a money order to pay and PayPal didn’t exist, with different businesses I’ve had. But in the last 6 months I’ve seen more abuse of bid retractions and non- payment than ever before.
I’ve seen an item I posted get bid up to a good bit higher than I expected it to sell for within hours of the auction opening. But then 12 hours and 5 minutes before the auction ends, right up against the 12 hour restriction for withdrawing a bid, the highest bidder retracted. I had some bids the last 12 hours but it sold lower than it should have because every time who saw the listing that week ignored it because the price was already way up there. By running the bid way up with a shill account they kept all the eyes and interest off the item for 6.5 of 7 days it was listed.
Just a few weeks ago I had something two bidders on an item raise the price more than $100 and then retract 12-24 hours later claiming “wrong amount”.
Then just a few days ago I had an item that I still have active get a flurry of bid, about 10 in 5 minutes, one bidder who kept making bids. Then as soon as they were high bidder they retracted all their previous bids. It’s clear they were just bidding to see what the others had done and then cancelled them all.
eBay needs to start paying a lot more attention to the patterns of the people with a lot of bid retractions. And if someone has more than a few retractions for “wrong amount entered” and then doesn’t enter a new bid they need to either take away their ability to retract bids or kick them off. Or at least allow sellers to ban bidders with more than a certain number of retractions in the last few months like we can those with can cancellations.
Just a few weeks ago I had something sell that I actually had two examples of, so as soon as the item closed I made a second chance offer to the next bidder in line explaining I had an identical example. Despite having just bid on the item within 5 minutes they sent me a reply that they no longer had the money and would I accept the amount that was just above what the third bidder in line bid. Then the original bidder totally ghosted me- no payment, no communication. I’m pretty sure that the second bidder was the same as the winner and did that in order to try and get a second chance offer and ask for it at the lower price. But they didn’t expect me to have two of the items, so their response that they didn’t have the money any longer didn’t exactly fit the circumstances when the offer was made within 5 minutes instead of waiting for the original buyer to default.
Looking back at that sale there were 10 bids that were blocked on that item by my setting blocking bidders that have had more than 2 cancellations in 6 months, more than I’ve had total on all others for the time it shows. And it was a niche collectible, not something with wide appeal. So it all looks like people are playing games.
This wasn’t a retraction, so not the exact same, but a spin on the same scam. By using a shill bidder to win and making sure they were second they set themselves up for a possible second chance offer, then had an excuse that they bought something else and could only afford to just beat out the third bidder in line.
I suggest everyone start adding all bid retractors who claim “wrong amount” to their blocked bidders list. You should already be adding everyone who defaults on a sale.
