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New eBay scam?
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21 posts in this topic

I've never seen this happen before.

I'm selling a comic on eBay via auction. The first person to bid, proceeded to bid 30 times, until it looked like the book would sell 3x GPA. Effectively scaring off all other bidders.

Then hours before the auction closes they cancelled all bids except their first bid, which was the minimum. 

Not sure what to do in this situation. Seems insane that eBay would allow this. :frustrated:

 

Edited by MatterEaterLad
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I don't understand.  Sometimes when I am the only bidder, and I want to increase my high bid amount, feebay doesn't increase the bid OVER my prior bid when I do so.  Is this a glitch?

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I may bid 30 times on an item... but never retract the bid.

Why does this happen... 

When you are riding a bike to the beach or at a gym on the treadmill it is easier to up the bid with the automatic next increment using one hand rather than enter an amount... 

 

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28 minutes ago, Yorick said:

I don't understand.  Sometimes when I am the only bidder, and I want to increase my high bid amount, feebay doesn't increase the bid OVER my prior bid when I do so.  Is this a glitch?

This. I think we're missing a variable to the equation.

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2 hours ago, MatterEaterLad said:

I've never seen this happen before.

I'm selling a comic on eBay via auction. The first person to bid, proceeded to bid 30 times, until it looked like the book would sell 3x GPA. Effectively scaring off all other bidders.

Then hours before the auction closes they cancelled all bids except their first bid, which was the minimum. 

Not sure what to do in this situation. Seems insane that eBay would allow this. :frustrated:

 

world-of-pain-big-lebowski-300x160.jpg.723fb026f2d79c7fe8e0700e47571a8f.jpg

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3 hours ago, MatterEaterLad said:

I've never seen this happen before.

I'm selling a comic on eBay via auction. The first person to bid, proceeded to bid 30 times, until it looked like the book would sell 3x GPA. Effectively scaring off all other bidders.

Then hours before the auction closes they cancelled all bids except their first bid, which was the minimum. 

Not sure what to do in this situation. Seems insane that eBay would allow this. :frustrated:

 

I dont understand-in order for it to reach 3X GPA there had to be another bidder that bid a $1 less so how could they snag it at their original minimum bid?

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3 hours ago, MatterEaterLad said:

I've never seen this happen before.

I'm selling a comic on eBay via auction. The first person to bid, proceeded to bid 30 times, until it looked like the book would sell 3x GPA. Effectively scaring off all other bidders.

Then hours before the auction closes they cancelled all bids except their first bid, which was the minimum. 

Not sure what to do in this situation. Seems insane that eBay would allow this. :frustrated:

 

This doesn't sound right. Not that you're relating it incorrectly, but like something is wrong with the ebay mainframe's proxy bidding function; that is, the adjusting of a high bidder's bid one step higher than the second high bidder's bid, unless I'm not understanding it correctly. He could have the top 30 bids, reinforcing his previous bid with an even higher bid, but tat still shouldn't change the bid amount that shows, which even if he bid $1,000,000, shoudnt be more than one step over the next high bidder's bid. If that's what's occurring, I would call ebay. I'm hearing from people that all kinds of technical problems are happening with ebay functions right now, and that ebay is working on this and that. This may be another ghost in their machine. 

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Yeah takes 2 bidders to raise an amount so someone would need 2 accounts.

And even if 2 people did what you suggest it wouldn't have much effect on the final result as the bidders retracted bids hours before auction end. Most serious buyers don't even bother looking at the auction until the final few minutes and won't bid until final 5 seconds. 

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1 hour ago, James J Johnson said:

This doesn't sound right. Not that you're relating it incorrectly, but like something is wrong with the ebay mainframe's proxy bidding function; that is, the adjusting of a high bidder's bid one step higher than the second high bidder's bid, unless I'm not understanding it correctly. He could have the top 30 bids, reinforcing his previous bid with an even higher bid, but tat still shouldn't change the bid amount that shows, which even if he bid $1,000,000, shoudnt be more than one step over the next high bidder's bid. If that's what's occurring, I would call ebay. I'm hearing from people that all kinds of technical problems are happening with ebay functions right now, and that ebay is working on this and that. This may be another ghost in their machine. 

Yeah, the only way I could see this happening is if the bidder used a second account (or a friend’s account) to bid against him/herself and then retracted all bids but the original bid for both accounts...

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17 minutes ago, Myowncollector said:

Yeah takes 2 bidders to raise an amount so someone would need 2 accounts.

And even if 2 people did what you suggest it wouldn't have much effect on the final result as the bidders retracted bids hours before auction end. Most serious buyers don't even bother looking at the auction until the final few minutes and won't bid until final 5 seconds. 

Seems to me if the one account bid it up into the stratosphere, early on in the auction, a lot of people might not look at it again.  Either way, it's serious sleaze.

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you can only retract a bid within an hour of making it-- that is one of the methods they use to keep this insane bidding from happening. I don't understand what the original poster is saying because that doesn't seem possible other than having NO BIDS at all until the last hour of the auction. And if that is the case-- this makes little sense as no one put a bid in to start with?

Maybe link us to the item and bid history. I have trouble believing this is even possible.

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You have to have an initial bidder make it like 10K and another bid it up 30 times in steps to make it outrageous. Then the first bidder might step out-- BUT this has to happen with 1 hour of the initial 10K bid. And then it drops to the lowest bid the repeat bidder made.

1 Hour is not a lot of time and so many other things have to be just right to make this work and stop other from bidding.

I don't think this is possible or even probable. In either case-- cancel the sale and block BOTH bidders-- and for the love of god-- TELL THE REST OF US THEIR ebay NAMES so we can avoid this BS.

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4 hours ago, 01TheDude said:

you can only retract a bid within an hour of making it-- that is one of the methods they use to keep this insane bidding from happening. I don't understand what the original poster is saying because that doesn't seem possible other than having NO BIDS at all until the last hour of the auction. And if that is the case-- this makes little sense as no one put a bid in to start with?

Maybe link us to the item and bid history. I have trouble believing this is even possible.

Yes. If he could post 2 screen shots of the bidding page, one the "normal view", and the other that shows the view after you select the viewing option, "See all proxy bids" (or some wording akin to that), we would have a much clearer picture of what the OP is describing as that selection will show all the intermediary bids that don't show when viewing the bids normally. . 

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It's back to where it was now. Guessing it was some kind of glitch? 

I wish I had a screenshot of the way it looked this morning. There were 30 bids so I'm thinking, "Great, lots of interest." But then I got a cancellation notice from eBay, clicked on the link, which took me back to the auction and it was only one bidder, who had bid 30 times, which isn't possible with no other bidders, right? Now it's back up to where it was with 4 different bidders. 

hm

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27 minutes ago, MatterEaterLad said:

It's back to where it was now. Guessing it was some kind of glitch? 

I wish I had a screenshot of the way it looked this morning. There were 30 bids so I'm thinking, "Great, lots of interest." But then I got a cancellation notice from eBay, clicked on the link, which took me back to the auction and it was only one bidder, who had bid 30 times, which isn't possible with no other bidders, right? Now it's back up to where it was with 4 different bidders. 

hm

You can have the high bid and then just keep upping your bid. That much can be done. It's not unusual to see the bidding on an auction in progress and the high bidder has more than 1 bid at the top of the list. So let's say the high bidder has the lead at $400, which is the next highest bid by the proper increment at that dollar level, over the second high bidder at $390, and then he bids $410. Now, he will be seen as having the two top bids, but the high bid for the auction will still be $400. The high bidder cannot advance his own high bid, no matter how many times he bids higher and higher. That is, until someone else beats one of his bids, and then the ebay computer will adjust that bid based on the new bidder's bid. 

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Hmmm...

I couldn't block the bidder who bid it up 30 times because...they were actively bidding.

In the end, that person won, and just sent a message saying they didn't bid that high and is confused, asking to cancel the sale.

Not sure if they're just a haphazard buyer, a total newbie, or it was a glitch on their end as well.

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