Suspect bidding

[reganmatt11]

Hi 

I have some records listed at the moment and have had some suspicious bidding.

I have had one person go through my listings and make bids and retract them and then rebid at a lower amount (about 30 listings).

I can't see why someone would do this and it has caused one of my regular customers to owe several hundred dollars as it seems that this person has only targeted auctions where my regular customer has bid on.

What it looks like to me is, this person has gone through and put in bids to probe the top bids of others and then retract and then bid an amount that is under the top bid to boost the price, but I don't see how it benefits anyone. It makes me look like I am using a shill.

Should I report this activity to eBay?

As it stands I am going to cancel all the bids by this buyer.

Regards

Matt

[padi*0409]

I feel so sad now..................................

Why doesn't WA have the same offers as youse eastern bleeding staters....................."spits dummy"...................

[englishrosegardens]

Here's something to try just to annoy HIM (her?) for a change, if you're game.

Get your regular buyer to bid on something they don't want, and make it a fairly high bid.  Wait for the pest to bid, then cancel your regular buyer's bid and end the auction so that the pest wins it and you get their details.  The risk is that they may pay and then leave you a red dot, try some sort of claim so that you lose your money, etc etc.  But you'd have the satisfaction of giving them a big shock, maybe to the point that they leave you alone in future.  Once you have their name you could possibly report them somewhere (not ebay).

Your Italian buyer/bidder could easily open a new ID with a US address.  The Chinese do it all the time for items they want but the sellers won't post overseas.  The feedback score would probably indicate this isn't the case, unless they've bought a lot overseas using a forwarding address.

[heihachi_73]

Someone with a feedback score of 1 just sent me a best offer more than the actual buy it now price. Their "1" comes from over a year ago and they have a 0% rating. Are they for real or are they a scammer looking for a free item if/when they file a Not Received/Not As Described? The item is $60 + $10 (parcel post) and they offered $70. Why didn't they simply buy it straight away? I really don't know whether I should accept it or block them.

[joethenuts]

i think they are offering you $70 in total,, if they were going to scam you they would of brought it at $60  just the same

a lot of my buy it now or best offer buyers just pay the buy it price,or offer you peanuts

[chameleon54]

There is a couple of reasons I can think of as to why someone would run up the bidding. If the buyers both regularly buy the same thing, ( collectables maybe ) , one buyer could make sure the other pays top price to reduce their spending power on future auctions. I used to attend physical auctions regularly and this used to happen on occasions.

If both buyers are dealers and planning to re-sell the items, they may be trying to dent the others profit margins by making them pay top dollar. Many dealers work on an averaging system, bidding higher than they expect to pay on the principle that some items will be cheaper, some dearer, but the overall prices will average out OK. By averaging their sales they keep the opposition away from choice items, meaning the unsuccesfull bidder has wasted their time and energy with little to show for it. . If another buyer runs them up to full price on all items it blows the averaging strategy out of the water and leaves the "succesfull" buyer with a large bill and small profit.

Both of these stratagies are quite common at physical real life auctions.

[padi*0409]

Another option would be to accept the offer and when you get paid add signature on delivery out of your own pocket, to cover yourself for any INR dispute if you're wary of the bidder.

BTW are you sure that guitar will only cost $10.00 for postage?????

[joethenuts]

good point padi   even though they are not the size of a normal guitar you cant put them in a sachel , and if  the buyer is in a country town you could be looking even $50 or more