Have I been scammed?

miecherox

Hello all,

A little advice if possible? Have recently bid on an item via ebay and "won" start price was £10.00 I placed a maximum bid of £15.55. A bid was placed a few hours before bidding ended for £12.59, then £14.01, Ebay then bid for me which took the amount to £14.51. This same bidder then bid £16.01 which meant they had won the item and retracted it a few minutes later.
Am I being too suspicious to think that this person was upping the auction amount for the seller?
- Iwouldn't want to be naive and think this doesn't happen!

Any advice appreciated

M x

frivolous_fay

What was the reason given for the retraction?

alex24

I'd say your suspicions are probably correct. It does go on quite a lot. Obvious signs are users with lower feedback scores bidding. This is usually the seller using a second account to bid up an item. Also, if it's only you and one other person bidding I would be suspicious.

miecherox

frivolous_fay wrote: »

What was the reason given for the retraction?

Reason: Entered wrong amount

kiwi_fruit

I can only see one solution to this: never bid until the last second. If everybody was doing that, there would be no shill bidders.

greenstreetprince

not quite kiwi_fruit, then you'd get shill bidders early taking the auction upto a 'decent' price for the seller, and 1 or 2 genuine bids at the end would be the icing on the cake.

unfortunately you cant stop shilling from taking place.

miecherox wrote: »

Reason: Entered wrong amount

use the advanced search page to see if the same bidder has placed any bids on the seller's other items recently, although thats not to say that will definitely expose that ID as a shill bidding account for this seller, it will go a long way to explainging things.

queenb1981

i think you are right. sounds like the person selling item possibly has another account to use and has pushed your bid up to max. Its happened to me a few times and is very annoying:mad: