posted on March 20, 2001 10:24:02 AM new
I strongly believe there was an attempt at bid shielding on one of my auctions. A bidder with a history of bid retractions (five during the past 30 days) placed a very high bid during the middle of the auction, only to retract it seconds before the auction ended. I am also withholding the item from the high bidder pending the investigation.
I notified eBay about this incident. Is there any additional action I can take against the bidders involved?
I wish eBay would change its bid retraction policy. Allowing users to retract bids seconds before the auction is absurd, not to mention that he had four days to change his mind or realize he has made a mistake (but neither of which are allowable reasons for bid retraction).
posted on March 21, 2001 03:19:03 PM new
I believe that if you protest long enough and loud enough about the bidder and state the number of retractions, ebay will do something.
I had a bidder with 13 retractions in a month. I cancelled her bids and wrote to ebay who said "nothing could be done". I wrote again and again until they warned her. Lo and behold, the very day after I cancelled her bids another bidder came along with umpteen bid retractions! I cancelled the bids and closed the auctions and reported this one also. Took several emails and several weeks of explaining why this shouldn't happen until they finally listened.
Actually, you shouldn't hold this against your underbidder. It's not fair to this person. Are you sure they're working together?
posted on March 25, 2001 03:29:36 PM new
I was under the impression that eBay would not allow a bidder to retract a bid after an auction had closed. How do they explain their deviation from their policies as clearly stated in the section on canceling bids?
posted on April 5, 2001 07:39:30 PM new
I don't know about recourse, But to address mtnmama, I think I would be curious to know if it was the same underbidder ID in the other cases involving the same bid retractor.
It may even be one and the same person using a differnet ID, or someone working with a partner.
And I believe this to be the concern hinted at here.
posted on April 7, 2001 04:43:56 PM new
If this has happened more than once then I'd be suspicious, but I have found myself retracting a bid at one time, because it was the wrong item or it wasn't what I expected it to be.
posted on April 23, 2001 10:03:50 PM new
I do believe there is always people with inte
ntions to defraud others. eBay should keep re
cords and follow that members bids and retrac
tions as well as second highest bidder. If th
ey noticed that these 2 persons bid on the sa
me auctions then there is a case.
If different second bidders are noticed, then
they should check the location of the individ
uals. College students are more than willing
to do that trick or any other thug.
Check their feedback, if not satisfactory to
your standards then cancel their bid and bloc
k them from bidding on your auction.
posted on May 12, 2001 08:34:05 PM new
I found a program that will check individauls for bid shielding and it tells you if you should deal with this person or not as a matter of fact I got it from Auction Watch. I don't know right now, cause I'm at work and the program is at home I will get back to you later on that.
