10-16-2015 03:09 PM
So I think a bidder just engaged in sham bidding on an item I had listed. Here's how it went down (I was watching the bids over the final half hour, so I saw what happend):
With 25 minutes left in the auction, bidder X bid and moved the price up to $87.
Two minutes later, bidder Y bid and moved the price up to $177.50. Because I was watching the auction, I know that bidder x's max bid was $175.
$177.50 stayed the top bid until 4 seconds were left in the auction, at which point bidder Y retracted his bid, with the explanation "Entered wrong amount". Note that bidder Y has 1 feedback in his history.
The auction ended immediately thereafter, with bidder winning the auction at $87.
Here's what I believe happened:
- bidder X liked the item at $87, and put in an artificially high max bid so that no one would reasonably bid more than himself
- bidder X used a second account (bidder Y) to push the price above that artificially high amount. Note that bidder Y's max bid was $180 (I can see that because the bid was retracted).
- thus over the last 20 minutes of the auction, the item was sitting at the artificial price of $177.50, meaning that no one else was interested in entering a bid.
- therefore X won the auction at $87, with no legitimate competition.
10-16-2015 11:21 PM
joseph.candelora wrote: So I think a bidder just engaged in sham bidding on an item I had listed. $177.50 stayed the top bid until 4 seconds were left in the auction, at which point bidder Y retracted his bid, with the explanation "Entered wrong amount". Note that bidder Y has 1 feedback in his history. The auction ended immediately thereafter, with bidder winning the auction at $87.
Doesn't sound like a scam to me. I think "bidder Y" was a newbie and had a case of buyer's remorse, and bailed out on you. That's how it looks to me.
10-17-2015 07:38 AM
10-24-2015 05:55 AM
Actually, there was plenty more I could do than ship to them.
1. Canceled the sale.
2. Commplained to eBay, outlining exactly what happened and calling out the two accounts.
3. Resisted the item.
And here's what happened:
- despite me canceling the sale, the guy still paid. I refunded his money immediately.
- a few days later, I got a "suspicious buyer notification" email from EBay on bidder #2, saying he's no longer a member. Doesn't make sense gven he had canceled his own bid, but whatever.
- looking at the auction now, I see that bidder #1, the guy who ultimately at won at too-cheap a price, is _no longer an eBay member_. Despite his 167 feedback with perfect 100% positive rating, his account has been canceled.
- this is just speculation, but seems clear to me that eBay investigated my complaint and banned this guy. Idiot probably logged into both accounts from same IP, or did same thing multiple times, or something.
- and the happy ending is my second auction went off without a hitch, selling for $45 more than the first ($132 vs $87)
After digging into this more, I determined that this scam has the name "bid shielding". Look it up if you want more info.
And if it happens to you, take action. You're not helpless.
10-24-2015 02:35 PM
09-21-2017 11:37 AM
Thank you for posting this! This happened to me yesterday and I reported it immediately. Still waiting to hear from ebay. I think this is more common than people think as some sellers might not even notice. It is absolutely ridiculous that ebay is still letting this go on after numerous threads/reports on the subject dating back 4 or more years.
11-02-2017 02:34 PM
This just happened to me. There were over 17 bids retracted right at the end of the auction. when I saw the price dropping I assumed there was a glitch or something, and went ahead and placed my max bid anyway, so he had to pay market price. but he almost won a boat for $11.50. It dropped thousands of dollars in seconds.
11-30-2017 08:43 PM
The exact same thing happened to me today and this is what happened.
The first ID entered the price as the next reasonable bid much early on and then second ID entered bid price at unreasonably high price so no one else can outbid him. But he did it a bit earlier than he intended to (more than an hour away from auction ending time) so he retracted the bid because he wouldn't be able to retract his bid after an hour of his bid time. And then the third ID was used to enter same unreasonably high bid and then retracted the bid one or two seconds right before the auction was ended so my item was sold to the first ID at very low price. I just reported this issue to ebay and I hope they will take action on this.
And when I checked their bid retraction history, the first ID has 4 bid retractions, the second ID has 41 bid retractions and the third ID has 82 bid retractions in the last 12 months.
01-21-2018 08:30 PM
I just had the same thing happen to me. I listed three phones (my family upgraded phones for Christmas). Two of the phones had bid retractions within seconds of the auction closing which in turn created a selling price several hundred under what other phones sold for. This is the new scam to get items way under price. I am reporting it to Ebay tomorrow. I’ve been selling on EBay since 2005, I used to not worry about scams on here but I’m almost ready to end my relationship withEbay if they can’t stay ahead of the scamming game. EBay gets their money and I would like mine.
01-24-2018 02:14 PM
That's exactly what happened to me with an iPhone sale...
05-19-2018 01:52 PM
Just saw it happen on another iphone sale as well. A bid well above market value kept away all other bidders and was retracted just 3 seconds before the auction ended, and the winner, with zero feedback, "wins" the phone for half the market price. There were four other auctions for the same phone model from the same seller happening at the same time, so the actual market price was clearly about double what this scam bidder paid. I've encouraged the seller to file a fraud complaint.
07-26-2018 07:41 PM
03-11-2019 05:09 PM
Yes this has happened to me as well.
Did anyone who reported to ebay got a response from them?
I was selling an iPhone.
Bidder A bid until 87£, and one min later bidder B bid to 225£.
When the auction ended, it suddenly dropped to 90£.
11-03-2019 07:30 PM
I just saw this happen on a very expensive mountain Bike I was trying to win. The auction skyrocketed with a few minutes left. I didn't bid because it was way too high for me. Then with 9 seconds left the high bidder retracted and it dropped back down to a super low price without anytime to bid. I think it was one seller with two accounts doing bid shielding. I contacted the seller and told him what I think happened.