Why hasn't eBay added any system to stop retraction fraud?

[locatingthefunny]

It's kind of dumb that a buyer can keep bidding and retracting to see what the current highest bid is. No, you didn't enter the wrong amount four times in a row lmao. It should be as easy as locking an account from making bids for x number of hours or days if they have numerous retractions within a set amount of time. I've had to start blocking buyers who do this, which is inconvenient because this kind of activity should automatically be blocked.

[eburtonlab]

It should be as easy as locking an account from making bids for x number of hours or days if they have numerous retractions within a set amount of time.

I don't necessarily disagree with your reasoning, but the sort of folks that are bidding and retracting repeatedly would likely think nothing of creating or using another eBay account every time they run into a block like that, so the net result of such a change would probably not actually be much different than the current status quo.

[dbfolks166mt]

     As the seller why did you not add the individual to your BBL the first, second, third..... time you saw the bid retraction? Sure as eburtonlab mentioned they can always create another account but that takes time and is their only option since they cannot use a guest account on an auction. 

[harborauction]

I think the really dumb part is that your bidder had to make a bid & retract multiple times, makes no sense to me. Anyone playing this game just needs to bid once, say they see a $100-$200 item and want to know what high bid is just bid $1000 once and be done with it. "ops, sorry entered wrong amount, was supposed to be $100" if anyone asks (they won't)

This trick is used to find high bids or reserve prices on auctions and it can make your auction look fishy to serious bidders, can also be used by sellers for more devious purposes that I won't point out

I agree, bidders with an inordinate amount of bid retractions should have bidding privileges shut down, saw a thread here the other day where a seller had looked at buyers FB and found they had like 50 retractions in the last month, that's a bit too much 

[pcobra93]

Shill bidders make Ebay a LOT of $$$$. They will never do anything to hinder them.

[eburtonlab]

Shill bidders make Ebay a LOT of $$$$. They will never do anything to hinder them.

If legitimate bidders don't bid because they suspect that shilling is going on, that winds up costing eBay more money in the long run, though.

So eBay has some incentive to prevent shill bidding and to prevent shilling sellers from damaging eBay's reputation.

[slippinjimmy]

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@pcobra93 wrote:

Shill bidders make Ebay a LOT of $$$$. They will never do anything to hinder them.

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We are not discussing "shill bidding".

[toysaver]

Best way to avoid this is to sell with the preferred Buy It Now format.   Auctions mean it takes an extra week to get your item and no guarantee you will win it anyway.   It's a couple seconds online using google to estimate what most consumer goods are worth.