What rule stops this cheating? 26 January 2005 at 11:37PM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Ebay, Auctions, Car Boot & Jumble Sales 8 replies 950 views

james32_uk

Other than being a complete !!!!!!, what's to stop you bidding well over the top price for an item with 0 bids and a low start price. Then at the very last minute retracting your bid and buying it for dirt cheap.

For example, bid £500 on a 21" TV with 0 bids and a starting price of £5. Then with a minute to go, retract your £500 bid and make the minimum bid of £5.

angelcake

Why would you do this? It doesn't make sense!
I didn't think a bid can be retracted without the aid of the seller????

james32_uk

A bidder can retract their bid, I assume at any point. Someone retracted a bid on one of my auctions today.

The point is, that bidding the £500 will mean noone else will bid on the item through the process of the auction. Then retract it at the last minute, and the price will fall back down to the next highest bid, or in this case the minimum bid. then you can quickly rebid at this price and get yourself a bargain!

travelchick

james23_uk wrote:

A bidder can retract their bid, I assume at any point. Someone retracted a bid on one of my auctions today.

The point is, that bidding the £500 will mean noone else will bid on the item through the process of the auction. Then retract it at the last minute, and the price will fall back down to the next highest bid, or in this case the minimum bid. then you can quickly rebid at this price and get yourself a bargain!

Owwwww Like your stlye im off shopping lol

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/buy/bid-retract.html this page explains why you cant do it but BLOODY SHAME ;-)

Trav
x

alanobrien

I would suggest this is a sort of fraud or at the very least a clear and deliberate attempt to manipulate an auction.

It is most likely that the seller would complain to ebay about an obvious attempt to scam him or her.

It is also likely that ebay would agree with the sellar be down on you like a ton of bricks but then again maybe not.

james32_uk

Ah yes, good old Ebay. I notice you can't retract a bid within the last 12 hours of an auction. They also recognise the following behaviour in order to protect bids, and claim to monitor attempts at this:

"Bid shielding - Using secondary User IDs or other eBay members to temporarily raise the level of bidding and/or price of an item to extremely high levels in order to protect the low bid level of a third bidder. "

Mr_T_5

james23_uk wrote:

Other than being a complete !!!!!!, what's to stop you bidding well over the top price for an item with 0 bids and a low start price. Then at the very last minute retracting your bid and buying it for dirt cheap.

For example, bid £500 on a 21" TV with 0 bids and a starting price of £5. Then with a minute to go, retract your £500 bid and make the minimum bid of £5.

You cant do it because if you bid say £500 when the starting price was £5 what you are doing is telling ebay to bid on your behalf up to the value of £500. (this is called proxy bidding). Although your maximum bid is £500 you will be the highest bid with only £5 until someone else enters the auction.

LD

What you are talking about is also called 'obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception' an offence under the theft act

robnye

i thought you could cancel a bid within 1 hour of placing it,

you can retract a bid up to the last 12 hours, but it shows on your feedback record

why do it?

if you really want the product, place a max bid on or better still use sniping software (places a bid with 10 seconds to go)