Bid Retraction Scam?

pennylane99

antoniomontana wrote:

can you still retract a bid till the last minute,i thought you couldnt do it within the last 24 hrs of the auction

A bidder can retract their bid 12 hours before listing ends, by doing this, all his/her bids are removed from the listing.

A bidder can still retract a bid within the last 12 hours of an auction but only if its retracted within an hour of placing the bid...and then it only removes the one bid, not any others previously placed by the same bidder.

Avoriaz

UltraCheap, in my opinion you should contact the seller and tell him what has happened and advise him that you are not prepared to complete the deal. Tell him that you will be relisting the item or offer him a BIN at circa £50. Tell him that you are reporting your suspicions to ebay but don’t suggest that you suspect him.

If he is innocent he may understand and not neg you.

If he his guilty the bar steward will probably neg you but at least you will have stopped him conning you.

I would risk a negative rather than be a victim to a scam.

Please note that this is My Opinion.:D

UltraCheap_2

Avoriaz wrote:

UltraCheap, in my opinion you should contact the seller and tell him what has happened and advise him that you are not prepared to complete the deal. Tell him that you will be relisting the item or offer him a BIN at circa £50. Tell him that you are reporting your suspicions to ebay but don’t suggest that you suspect him.

If he is innocent he may understand and not neg you.

If he his guilty the bar steward will probably neg you but at least you will have stopped him conning you.

I would risk a negative rather than be a victim to a scam.

Please note that this is My Opinion.:D

Thanks, I agree, I have asked ebay if they can find any relation between the bidder that retracted, and the bidder that won. I received an email this morning from ebay to say that they will investigate the problem (below) but I don't get the feeling that they are going to do much. Either I need to decide if I should post the item to the winner, or not. I would like to put this behind me , in retrospect I probably should have cancelled the auction all together as soon as the bidder retracted. I have modified my buyer preferences (blocking bidders that have negative feedback or who have not paid etc) so that I can avoid these types of bidders in the future, however taking these precautions would not have protected me from this specific bidder who had 100% positive feedback, 0 unpaid, feedback over 5.

At the moment, it appears that the only way to avoid retracting bidders is to check each bidders profile throughout an auction, and manually cancel any bids from dodgy characters.

I hope that in the future, ebay will include a buyer preferences that will allow sellers to block ebayers that have retracted bids in the past. Or even better, ebay should not allow bid retractions at all.

Here's the response from ebay:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting eBay. I appreciate the opportunity to assist you with your concern regarding the invalid bid retraction of your bidder that you listed. I understand your concern and I'd like to help you resolve this as quickly and easily as possible.

I appreciate that you let us know about this member. We take reports of
members breaking our rules very seriously.

I'll investigate your report as soon as possible, usually within 24
hours. If necessary we'll take appropriate action against this member
(e.g. a warning or suspension) to ensure eBay remains a safe and
reputable place to buy and sell. However, as it's important that eBay
maintains member privacy, we can't share details of the action we take.

I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you taking a moment to
express your concern to us. Please continue to inform us whenever you
have any cause for suspicion. Thank you for helping to keep eBay a safe,
fun place to buy and sell.

Kind regards,

eBay Trust & Safety

UltraCheap_2

Here's the next reply from ebay:

Thank you for writing back to eBay. I'm happy to assist you with your concern, in reference to the item you've listed.

I understand you'd like us to verify the authenticity of the two bidders
who are involved in your listings. I've checked this account and I can assure you that there's no relation between the two bidders.

Regarding the bid retraction made please be assured that we'll investigate reports of invalid bid retractions thoroughly. We understand that sellers and other bidders were seriously inconvenienced by retracted bids such as your case.

Every bid on eBay is binding (unless the item is listed in a category
under the Non-Binding Bid Policy or the transaction is prohibited by law
or by eBay's User Agreement).

It is possible for a bidder to cancel a bid they've placed before the
end of an auction, but only in the exceptional circumstances. We take
note on the number of times the buyer retracted a bid, this is displayed
in the feedback profile.

Withdrawing from a purchase after the listing has ended is against eBay
rules.

I understand the doubts or even the suspicions you may have for
the bidders in your listings. You may want to cancel unwanted bids, if
this is the case I suggest you email the bidder involved, clearly
stating that you will not accept their bids in the future. Please carbon
copy (Cc) us on that email so we may have a copy for our records.

You may then go to the bidding history page of that item and click on
the link for "Cancelling" a bid. The Cancel Bid page is also available
via the "Site Map" link on the top of any eBay page. Follow the
instructions carefully to cancel that bidder's bid.

Should the bidder choose to ignore your request and they rebid on your
items, you can block the bidder from bidding on your listings.

If the banned bidder tries to bid on your listing, they will receive
this message:

"Unfortunately, this seller has decided that you are not permitted to
bid on their listings. You may contact the seller via the Ask Seller a
Question feature if you want additional details."

If you have any other concerns please do not hesitate to email us. Thank
you for your using eBay.

Kind regards,

eBay Trust & Safety

frivolous_fay

That's actually an atypically sensible reply from ebay.

They say there's no relationship between the bidders; you could take a small step towards checking this for yourself by checking the registered location of the two bidders. It's possible that once the bidder saw what other were prepared to bid, he retracted his bids and decided not to bother.

Your winning bidder may be a completely innocent party - ebay's last message certainly hinted that you're not meant to back out of the transaction at this point without good reason.

UltraCheap_2

I did an internet search on the winning bidders address - and it is a mailbox with Mailbox Etc UK. I thought it seemed a bit fishy because the first line of the address is Suite xxx, turns out that this is not the actual adress of the bidder, but the rented mailbox number.

How do I find out the address of the other bidder - that retracted?

Thanks!

ScoobieGirl

Avoriaz wrote:

UltraCheap, in my opinion you should contact the seller and tell him what has happened and advise him that you are not prepared to complete the deal. Tell him that you will be relisting the item or offer him a BIN at circa £50.

As a naive buyer, I would view a seller saying this as them wanting another chance to sell an item because it fetched lower than they were expecting and would be tempted to give neg feedback as they had deprived me of a bargain!

Hopefully your buyer will be more understanding

Sorry that this g*t has cost you money

frivolous_fay

UltraCheap wrote:

I did an internet search on the winning bidders address - and it is a mailbox with Mailbox Etc UK. I thought it seemed a bit fishy because the first line of the address is Suite xxx, turns out that this is not the actual adress of the bidder, but the rented mailbox number.

How do I find out the address of the other bidder - that retracted?

Thanks!

All you can do is an advanced search and find out the town he's registered in.

Jellicle

UltraCheap wrote:

Hi,

Has anyone else had a similar problem?

I had an item for sale on ebay for the past week. I have had three ebayers bidding against each other for the item. One ebayer made bid after bid, bringing the price up rather high, and then last night retracted ALL bids, the price of the auction plummeted from £54 to £20. The other two bidders are now bidding up the item, so hopefully I wont lose too much.

Here is my concern. I looked at the history of the retracted bidder and I found that the ebayer has won some amazing deals in the past such as a signed print that usually sells for £125, instead for US $1, and a pair of expensive sunglasses for US $1.05.

Is this a possible scam? ...

Right, here's how it goes:
You spot an auction early on and start a fast bidding war between two of your aliases, to put off any genuine bidders who see the price rocketing.
At some point you make a single bid with a third alias which is just higher than the highest bid of the genuine bidder (but which is still pretty low), and then the two high bidders bale out at the last possible moment leaving the third alias as high bidder (at a low price).
If there are no genuine bidders then you can pick up items for VERY low prices.

PINGA14

What about having a look on goofbay to see if the two bidders have bid on or won other items, then check these items to see if the same thing has happened