Opinions please: dirty dealings or sniping?

[tralfaz_no1]

Recently bid on an item which had a Buy Now of $5000 but no reserve. My bid at $$2200.00 was the highest for days and I had entered the bid price I was prepared to go to as $2800.00. Twenty seconds before the bidding closed the price suddenly went from $2200.00 to $2850.00 with no intervening bids at all.

Automated bidding I have seen in the past normally just escalates exceptionally quickly, but this one jump of $650 straight over what I had been prepared to go to gives the impression that someone could see my intended limit, and used that to beat me.

The bidder was a new identity with less than 9 feedback score and all recent bids on their bid history with the seller. If I was outbid using a sniper program then good luck to the buyer as I don't use them, but the sudden increase of $650.00 made me suspect that the item may have reached no-where near the "Buy Now" price, and the seller could have intervened with another ID to prevent what was to them a substantial loss. The seller has a feedback score also less than 10.

I don't mind sellers pulling their items but I understand that it can't be done within a certain period of the auction end (I don't sell so really don't follow this closely). What does the group think - dirty dealings or sniping? Or was the buyer just lucky picking the amount? 😉

[***super_nova***]

Again, thanks everyone for the opinions. Surprise, surprise, I have been given a Second Chance offer, not at my bid before the "winning" bidder escalated the bids by $450 in one hike, but at the top bid I was willing to pay.

As Lyndal said, that is the way it goes; the seller did not just make this price up, that is what you will be offered the item at if the seller hits the second chance offer link.

This also shows that it was not shill bidding; if they want to bid the item up they would not do it in the last few seconds.  If the seller did not want to sell the item at a great loss and therefore deliberately outbid you, they would not be offering it to you now, would they?  Unless they are very stupid shill bidders 🙂

[shepherdsrule]

My personal opinion, for what it is worth - Shill bidding to the max OP

[tralfaz_no1]

Thanks again for all the opinions. Unlike some of the other posts on this Board it didn't go off topic at all and I picked up some useful information about shill bidding. You are never too long on eBay to learn some thing new.

Updating on what has happened the seller has contacted me and told me that the winning bidder kept messing him about to the point where he waited and waited for a phone call that finally came 2 hours late, nearly causing him to miss a flight. The upshot of the deal was the winning bidder had no intention of ever paying cash at all for the car being sold, and really wanted to barter a swap deal for another car without money changing hands.The bidding was therefore entirely false as the "winner" only wanted to get in a position where others were excluded and he could try the swap from a stronger position, ie. bid well above anyone else to lock them out. Like I said above you never stop learning about different approaches on eBay you hadn't heard of before.

The seller was finally being pestered by this "winning" bidder so much that he told him to get lost, at which point apparently the bidder promptly de-registered as a user. As a sign of good faith the seller has now offered the car at one of my original much lower bidding points, not the second chance offer higher amount. Subject to an inspection I will be proceeding so I am glad I stuck this out, and the Board members helped by being positive and giving sound opinions, so thanks.

[lyndal1838]

Well, just to further your ebay education.....the "winning" bidder can not just deregister themselves.  It would have been done by ebay so he must have been causing problems for other ebay users before this particular case hit the fan.