Something is bothering me about something I saw on Ebay last night. And maybe this is common, I don't know, I have not been on Ebay in years, I just happened to start looking for something a few days ago, and when I saw this, it really was kind of upsetting. So here's the deal. I was watching an auction on an Ipad2 64gb from a reseller called Nextworth. They sell a lot of used and refurb Ipads and stuff like that. People usually way overpay on those things, even now, but that's not the issue. This particular item, it happened to get down to about 10 minutes or so left until the auction ended, and at some point during the day, someone had set the latest bid at an even $500.00, which frankly is way too much for that. Anyway, I went ahead and watched it wind down, because I was curious to see how much it would end up going for. So, it ticks down, ticks down, and boom, the auction ends. And right there before my eyes, the bid changed, and said the winning bid was $320 . WTH? How did that happen? $500 is way too much, but $320 is at least a hundred less than this would have gone for on an average day, from what I have seen. So how the heck did that happen? Is this a common thing, are people somehow able to manipulate bids and things like that, but yet PULL the bid at the last second, leaving a much lower bid as the winner? That seems EXTREMELY fishy to me, my gut tells me that some kind of hackerish thing was going on, where someone was trying to scare off other bidders by placing the price too high, thus managing to keep the price low for a real bid. Does that make sense? Or is this something that happens all the time, and I should just ignore it and not let it disturb me? It just seems that that kind of thing really degrades the integrity of Ebay as a whole, if that sort of thing can happen.. Have you seen that before?
Is that the PROXY bid? I know you can set your MAX (unrelated to our very own MadMax) and walk away... and if someone outbids, you're done... but then again, I haven't bid there in about 10 years.
I havent sen that happen before, but its possible that a bid was retracted at the last minute. Though it's pretty tough to get a bid retracted, it can be done. Personally, I havent seen it retracted that close to the end of auction before, so it does look suspicious.
if the proxy bid shoots up to 500, then thats where the price will be set at. It wont ever go back down...this does look somewhat funky
The only other scenario I could see happening is that the $500 bid was made by seller's dummy account to get around paying the EBay fee for higher minimum bid auctions. Since a seller can retract any bid at anytime, its possible he retracted the fake bid so that he wouldnt lose out on the real bid of $320.
someone who had the bid at $500, redacted... probably had two accounts, one set at $320 the other at $500 no one wanted to touch the $500 and then at the last second they redacted and got the $320 bid sneaky!
I agree with this. When I sell things on ebay, and their looks to be a suspicious buyer, I will cancel his bid which will instantly update to the next highest bid. In this case, it looks like the buyer was hoping for a more legitimate bidder at over 500.00. Also, it could be more sinister. The actual seller might have been trying to bid the legitimate bidder up with a phony account and when the legitimate bidder wouldn't bite at over 500.00, retracted the bid.
But that's crazy, no one would ever go to Ebay if that sort of thing was allowed, or even possible. I mean, what would prevent someone from putting a $1,000,000.00 bid on any object, and then retracting it at the last second and win any auction for pennies. No one would dare place a bid on that item. I don't see how that could ever be a legitimate thing, and I bet Ebay would never allow it. Like I said, I have not been on Ebay for years and years, so I don't even know the answer to this: Does Ebay even ALLOW you to retract a bid once it has been made? Seems to me, you hit that Bid button, you are committed. That's why it bothered me so much, it seems like illegal behavior to me.
So SELLERS can cancel any bid, but buyers cannot? That seems highly unethical to me, wouldn't Ebay ban them for doing that, if they were doing that in order to try to drive up bids?
I have a avoided eBay for a few years but went back and bought a few things recently. I think it is worse now that the buyers protections are higher. I got shafted on two items and I had to return them. In the end I got the cash back but huge waste of time.
From my experience, I did not think anyone is able to retract a bid under the last hour. Maybe there is a loophole that allows it to happen if the seller agrees, which would raise red flags.
The seller likely cancelled the bid. The bidding account was a phony/dummy account set up to pump up prices artificially. Happens all the time.
It clearly says the bid was retracted. If sellers go around canceling bids they can have problems. Or it used to work that way. For the strategy mentioned earlier to work, you want a fake eBay account to retract it.
It's not. But, it's hard to catch people, let alone prove it. If people get lazy they can get busted, I'm guessing. Where does it say it was retracted vs. cancelled? *edit: NVM, saw it in the link ArtV posted. I've cancelled bids before as a seller no problem. It's less risky/problematic than retracting a bid as a buyer, IMO.
Very sneaky. I believe someone has found a loophole. It worked because "the wrong bid" was placed and cancelled within 1 hour. You get 2 retractions per 6 months and you can retract if the auction has 12 or more hours remaining or cancelling a bid within the hour of placing it. Look at the timing of the last 2 bidders...and the "wrong amount" was a new bidder...very fishy... http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&_trksid=p4340.l2565&rt=nc&item=190666031482
Ive never had a problem with Ebay up until recently. I purchased something and have yet to recieve it. I try to file a dispute with Ebay they say since I paid with a guest pay pal account that I need to go through them. I try to file a dispute there but am made to log in and when I search it cannot find the transaction id. Im going to give a few more days then Ill file a dispute with my bank theyre good about handling that sort of thing.
Indeed. And they have done it twice with the same scenario: http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI....eName=PageBidderProfileViewBids_None_ViewLink
Just to clarify: What happened here is, the bid on the item sat at $500 for at least a couple of hours. The bid STAYED at $500 all the way to the end of the auction, and then (in case you don't know what it does) the screen automatically changed over from the 'auction' screen to the 'ended' screen. And when it did that change, the number in the bidding area did a little 'hiccup' (for lack of a better word) and then changed to be a 'winning bid' of $326. On the one hand, I understand the idea that a seller can cancel a bid from a 'fishy' buyer, which MAY be what happened, but if so, why wait until the very moment when the auction ended? Doesn't make sense if it is above-board. Also, the seller has had no problems pulling $450+ on this same item, so I don't see how they could have been benefited by having a dummy account set it at $500, knowing full well the next-highest legit bid was only $326. So it seems to be against the best interests of the seller to have done it, no matter how you slice it. The seller is the one who lost over a hundred bucks on this deal. SO it seems that either A) the seller deliberately 'hid' the item under a false high bid in order to cut a 'better deal' for a customer for some reason, but that seems pretty far fetched.. or B) some buyer somehow used some kind of hack or something which forced Ebay to show a false high bid which actually didn't exist, and when the auction ended, the real (much lower) bid was left standing. Either way, something very screwy going on. I was tempted to contact the seller about it, but if it was the seller themselves doing it for some illicit reason, then that could tip them off that someone saw what happened, and they could cover their tracks. Who would be the entity to report it to? Ebay itself? Would they do anything, or even care? Shaking my head on this one....
Yes. I do this when I feel like the buyer is shady and I'd rather have a more stable buyer (with reputation) buy my stuff. Even if the low rep guy bids more.
