What sort of scam?

Moglex

I've just had three more occurances of an "event" that I've encountered once before.

What happens is that you bid on an item from a seller who maintains a listing for that particular item (i.e. is obviously selling a stock one at a time), but are outbid.

Within minutes you get a "second chance offer".

If you take it up, fine, but if not the item appears again as a re-list.

I can't believe that three different sellers (all selling the same variety of the same type of item) have had their top bidder pull out of the auction within minutes of it ending.

None of these were BIN's with more than one item available.

Are people scamming ebay in some way?

Hintza

I'm not sure. I think it depends which button you press. You have two choices. "Relist" or "sell similar" I think the seller just hits the relist button.

I think it is probably a slight flaw in the EBay system. I often relist this way if I have a few to sell but to be honest can't remember whether is says relisted item or not...but I assume it does.

Moglex

OK, that makes sense.

The seller obviously determines if the second highest price is acceptable and if it is makes a second chance offer. Then he relists to start on the next one. So no scam involved.

Of course, now I've worked this out it'll enable me to "work the system" and get items for the close to the cheapest price the seller is prepared to accept.

mindysouthern

Ive heard of some people using 'friends' to bid on items to get the price up, therefore you pay your max, a way to check this would be to go into a sellers history and look at their last few listings to see if this has been done on more of their auctions and then look at the bid history on the item to see if its the same person over again. If it is the same person losing out on the item then its dodge, not in so far as you wont get the item but more the seller squeezing all those extra pennies on the sale...

hope this helps

syanide

This is a scam and it works as you said.. people get the price hicked up to get the highest amount they can for their items. Normally a friend will bid high to out bid others then the item is offered to the 2nd highest bidder at their top price. Report the item to ebay and seller to ebay or tell the seller to remove the top bidder to get your true bid.

soolin

If I have a lot of stock on an unusual item I will often put one up for auction,, then offer 2nd chance offers to all underbidders that meet my lowest acceptable price. It saves on listing fees and I get quite a high take up of my second chance offers.

I also usually relist using the same auction template if I have more left and go through the whole process a week later.

Soo

Moglex

Soolin, can you do that automatically?

It seems to happen extremely quickly, and these are people who have shops with items ending at all sorts of weird hours.

It seems odd that they'd be hovering over the keyboard to make these offers.

The auctions have all been "private bidder", but that is understandable since there are several people in competition and given the tricksy way they're playing the system I don't suppose they'd shy away from emailing a competitor's bidder.

They all have a lot of 100% feedback so if anyone is suffering it doesn't seem to be the customers (unless they are shilling and as all my bids are snipes unrelated to other people's bids, so it would not affect me).

mindysouthern

soolin wrote:

If I have a lot of stock on an unusual item I will often put one up for auction,, then offer 2nd chance offers to all underbidders that meet my lowest acceptable price. It saves on listing fees and I get quite a high take up of my second chance offers.

I also usually relist using the same auction template if I have more left and go through the whole process a week later.

Soo

be very careful, if Ebay find out you could be banned for 'avoiding fees', unless you offer them the second chance through Ebay?

aeuerby

mindysouthern wrote:

be very careful, if Ebay find out you could be banned for 'avoiding fees', unless you offer them the second chance through Ebay?

There is nothing wrong in the way Soo is offering her "second chance offers"
When your item finishes, you can go to the section that offers the second chance and then tick all the people that you want to offer it too.

You only pay the final value fee's as ebay don't charge for listing second chance offers.

soolin

Thank you aeuerby :money:

mindysouthern, all my second chance offers are done automatically through ebay as they make it very very easy to set it up and do it and it is 100% legit. I am too much of a scaredy cat to break rules.

All I do is wait for the auction to end, and then immediately, go into my sold listings and using the drop down box I go to 'send a second chance offer' and that shows me all the people eligible, and even allows me to add a personal note to my offer. I usually explain using that note facility that this is an official ebay SCO and that they need to follow the instructions that ebay supply should they wish to take the offer up. Then everyone that you indicate will get a SCO all in one go.

I can get my SCOs out within 2 minutes of an auction ending.

Soo

zeke

soolin wrote:

Thank you aeuerby :money:

mindysouthern, all my second chance offers are done automatically through ebay as they make it very very easy to set it up and do it and it is 100% legit. I am too much of a scaredy cat to break rules.

All I do is wait for the auction to end, and then immediately, go into my sold listings and using the drop down box I go to 'send a second chance offer' and that shows me all the people eligible, and even allows me to add a personal note to my offer. I usually explain using that note facility that this is an official ebay SCO and that they need to follow the instructions that ebay supply should they wish to take the offer up. Then everyone that you indicate will get a SCO all in one go.

I can get my SCOs out within 2 minutes of an auction ending.

Soo

I do exactly the same when I have multiple copies of an item, send out SCOs ASAP (hopefully while the runners-up are still on-line), listing for a day. 24 hrs later relist with the same template, or if I'm listing with a BIN that's higher than the SCOs as well as auction facility, relist straight away. Can't see anything wrong with this.