How do you get ebay to take action in relation to misuse of bid retractions

[gutterpunkz05]

How do you get ebay to take action against members misusing bid retractions to corrupt the bidding process.  IE;  Make winning

bid to  ascertain underbidders maximum, then retract bid and place bid equal to underbidders maximum, therefore leaving

the underbidder as the highest bidder exposed to their maximum bid.   I have complained to ebay by phone and email about

one particular bidder who exposed my maximum bid on six seperate items with one seller on 26/1/2014, this bidder has over

280 retracted bids in the last six months.  Another two bidders on items from the same seller have also adopted this practice

on items I have bid on, one of these sellers only has a feedback of 17 with 2 bid retractions and a 100% trading record with

this one seller.  To date there is no indication that ebay intends to act on my complaints as all items remained active with no

bid cancellations.  As far as I am aware this practice is against ebay rules and possibly illegal as is shill bidding.

Does this seem suspect or have I just been extremely unlucky to experience this on such a scale.  I am considering refusing

to pay for items until I receive some feedback from ebay relating to my complaints, but when I complained by phone they

refused to give me a report or case number and stated I would not be advised of the results of any ebay investigation.

HELP.... any advise would be much appreciated

[gutterpunkz05]

Thank you all for your interest, comments and support or otherwise,  Thank you Thank you Thank you

AND A BIG THANK YOU TO EBAY,  My faith has been restored.

I   have just received  two most welcome emails from ebay to advise that at least five of the auctions have now been cancelled

 and unspecified action (privacy restrictions) has been commenced against three individual bidders.  At this time I stil

 have to cross reference all item numbers concerned with the Ebay correspondence just  to make sure that nothing has

been missed, as I had not yet made a complaint about a seperate yet related incident yesterday, however I am hopeful that they have

also detected that item.

Again  Thank you Thank you  Thank you.

[thecatspjs]

Thats promising news gutterpunkz05.

DG agree with your sentiments very much about the types of breaches that eBay takes action on, in comparsion to other types.

[go-tazz]

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@gutterpunkz05 wrote:

Thank you all for your interest, comments and support or otherwise,  Thank you Thank you Thank you

AND A BIG THANK YOU TO EBAY,  My faith has been restored.

I   have just received  two most welcome emails from ebay to advise that at least five of the auctions have now been cancelled

 and unspecified action (privacy restrictions) has been commenced against three individual bidders.  At this time I stil

 have to cross reference all item numbers concerned with the Ebay correspondence just  to make sure that nothing has

been missed, as I had not yet made a complaint about a seperate yet related incident yesterday, however I am hopeful that they have

also detected that item.

Again  Thank you Thank you  Thank you.

---

Just keep in mind that unspecified action generally means no action will be taken,(and since they can't "tell" you

what action was taken you can't check whether action was taken).

The only time they might act is when it concern one of your transactions,(any others they where involved with will go

through as normal),

[gutterpunkz05]

Yeah I realize that they will probably just hand out a warning,  but at least all auctions that were stil live were cancelled, so if the seller was not involved at least they might now pay a bit more attention to what is going on as they also have a duty to report suspect

bidding practices.  If the seller was involved  is stil being investigated.     I realize that ebay is restricted as to what they can divulge

in relation to any investigation due to privacy legislation but to indicate that a complainant will not receive any feedback whatsoever

does not instil much faith in their system.   The online automated complaint system is a check the box type system, to ensure the

complaint is forwarded to the right area, but is a nightmare if your complaint does not fall within any specific box.   At least in the end

it did not cost me too much in relation to auctions that finished before ebay acted.    I could probably stil push for those  maters to

be cancelled, but will just take it on board.   I for one will be paying a lot more attention to bidding history in the future and will probably be a bit more conservative with maximum bids.

For anyone who sugested sniping  as a way to avoid this corrupt practice, I would point out that in most cases bids were

placed, retracted and replaced in under a minute

[gutterpunkz05]

Just a quick update for all, am seeing signs that tend to indicate more than a warning may result.

All the sellers auctions have now been removed, not just the ones that I complained about.    Only 46 items remain listed

and they are all buy it now only.

[padi*0409]

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@gutterpunkz05 wrote:

Just a quick update for all, am seeing signs that tend to indicate more than a warning may result.

All the sellers auctions have now been removed, not just the ones that I complained about.    Only 46 items remain listed

and they are all buy it now only.

---

A good outcome, a bit of a shame the buyer/bidder in my case is still allowed to bid (and retract) on auctions..............

GRRRRR.......................

[go-tazz]

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@gutterpunkz05 wrote:

Just a quick update for all, am seeing signs that tend to indicate more than a warning may result.

All the sellers auctions have now been removed, not just the ones that I complained about.    Only 46 items remain listed

and they are all buy it now only.

---

That's the "punishment" that used to be handed out,(the seller is restricted to BIN's for a month).

Then they can go do what they want again,(most always went back to shill bidding until they got reported again),

It's an on going circle that never seems to stop,(hence why I haven't reported any for quite a while)