Dodgy bidder retracted bid after pushed my bid to its maximum amount. Seller phantom?

[theos62]

I am bidding on an item placed an opening bid then within an hour of the auction close a new bidder with only 1 feedback score, has bid in small increments till they exceeded my maximum amount. Then they retracted the last bid to leave my bid at its maximum amount. But their is no provided reason for their retraction.

Is this a phantom bidder helping the seller?

The retraction should have been for all their bids.

[*crikey*mate*]

I actually agree with you.

**bleep**

hope that your maximum bis was only what you were prepared to pay...

I don't know if it will do any good, but I think I would give eBay a ring and just let them know what you suspect has happened. It may be they can track a history of this kind of behaviour and intercede.....  

sorry it has happened to you, but I daresay there is not too much you will be able to do.

and this is one good reason why eBay should (and hopefully does) monitor bid retractions.

[*crikey*mate*]

that bleep word was dam n - I didnt swear *rolls eyes*

from another perspective = it may be an innocent buyer who didn't think through the ramifications of their actions and just had second thoughts about wanting to spend that much money and so was just thinking of removing their bid so they didn't win it, and thus they didn't think there was a need to remove more iykwim

[cq_tech]

It would go a long way towards preventing shill bidding if, when a bidder retracts his/her bid, especially when it exposes the high-bidder's proxy, ALL prior bids should be retracted as well.

[*crikey*mate*]

i wholeheartedly agree CQ

i did think though that when a bid was retracted another bid had to be placed? So they could just bid 50c less than the other bidder's high price iykwim - so I don't know what the answer is - it's all kind of dodgy and looks like some know how to manipulate the system.

A lesson to all of us I guess, to only place a bid that is the maximum amount that you are prepared to spend - either that or place your bid in the last few seconds so as not to give the shillers a chance. and just hope that your bid is enough.

[cq_tech]

Crikey, it's reached the stage where I no longer bid in auctions and will only purchase BIN items from ebay these days. Despite their protestations to the contrary, ebay is rife with shilling yet reporting it is simply a waste of bloody time.

[amber-eyed-girl]

I rarely bid on auctions now, too.

[afantiques]

Consider retracting your own bid. Look at the bidding history, click on the ID of the suspect bidder to see if they have a pattern of bidding only on that seller, and show a lot of bid retractions.

There is still a lot you can see about bidders despite ebay doing what it can to hide suspect activity.

[springyzone]

It would go a long way towards preventing shill bidding if, when a bidder retracts his/her bid, especially when it exposes the high-bidder's proxy, ALL prior bids should be retracted as well.

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Totally agree.

[polocross58]

OP -- same thing happened to me.  But it only happened once, years ago when I was inexperienced and trusted ebay when it told me to 'bid now or you could lose the item' or something similar.  Like a donkey, I kept upping my bids.  My 'shadow' bidder did the same.  I ended up 'winning' the item but paid at least double its worth.  Still can't look at it without remembering that.  Just not worth it

These days, I snipe at the end.  Some you win, others you don't.  But losing out fair and square hurts far less than knowing you've been scammed by shill-bidding

I know someone who won't even put an item on their Watch List, they're so over Ebay shlling.  Instead, they save the item in a dedicated folder in their private Favourites, which sounded a good idea to me when I heard it

Someone has posted here that you could have a go at retracting your own bid and that sounds like a great suggestion too