posted on March 24, 2000 04:53:43 PM new
There is a bidder scam still going around without much help from e-bay other than a $1.00 reserve fee being charged to sellers.
The scam involves a bidder with multiple bidder names. This scam is known as a lock out.
>The seller posts an item valued at $100.00 with a minimum of $10.00 and no reserve.
>Scammer bids $200.00 max amount which places him at $10.00 current bid. Then scammer immediately uses a bogus name and posts a $190.00 bid running the current bid to $200.00.
>Bidders won't bid since current bid is way out of line.
>just before auction ends, scammer retracts bogus bid and gets the item for $10.00.
*** The only way to protect yourself as the seller is to place a reserve on the item. So now, not only are you scaring away bidders with a reserve but e-bay makes a buck by charging a $1.00 for protection.
*** I know that e-bay is aware of this problem and has brushed this issue off. They don't even return e-mails about this. Why can auction sites such as Amazon protect thier sellers by not allowing bid retractions and E-bay can't.
Sellers Beware!!!!!
posted on April 4, 2000 03:02:26 PM new
This isn't something new, it's been around probably as long as eBay itself!
The scam is known as "Bid Shielding" and it pretty much works the way you describe. In fact, eBay's new policy of showing bid retractions along with your feedback is partly in answer to this.
To protect yourself... in the case of a bid being retracted just prior to closing, do the following:
*Look at the email address of both the retracter and high bidder. If they are from the same ISP or have similar sounding or related names, look deeper.
*Pull the contact information from eBay on BOTH user IDs. If it's the same person, address or city, you got em!
*If both users are on AOL, have an AOL user pull up their User Profiles. We've caught scammers this way before. One person bidding on their own auctions, actually listed the second ID there as her husband!
Note- most cases of bid shielding and bid padding I've seen are poorly done. A lot of these folks aren't too smart and haven't thought it out very well. Forward all your detective work to Safe Harbor, confront the person and they'll often disappear!
---
Tom in NJ "I won't rest until all the junk in America has been shipped to a good home"
posted on April 7, 2000 10:56:28 PM new
At boxLot we've addressed this issue...we don't allow bid retractions.
If a bidder mistakenly enters a bid (tough to do, mind you) he needs to contact the seller and ask if it can be removed. Otherwise, there is an obligation to pay.
. Thanks for the thread and warning.