O/T....Can any Ebay experts help me please?

[Baz]

Recently started selling on Ebay....One "lot" was my scooter....It finished last night, and I was watching the bidding on my phone, at work, as it unfolded....I was already very happy that reserve had been met, and a fair price agreed as we entered the last 15 minutes....I was expecting a chap who had viewed the bike at the weekend to bid slightly more, so I waited expectantly....Only to see some muppet bid an exorbitant price with about 12 minutes to go (meaning that anyone realistic would no longer bid....Including my local man) and then retract the bid in the dying seconds, leaving a winner, but at a lower price than the local chap would have paid!I can't help thinking that this was some kind of set up, and that maybe the "fake" bidder and the eventual winner are either working together, or the same person, just ensuring that they won the bike at a low price?Is there a way that I can get Ebay to look into this incident? I'd have been happy with the end price, had I felt that it had been reached honestly, but I really think something went on here....The ironic thing is that the local chap offered me the cash at the weekend, and I declined out of fairness to the people watching and bidding....That'll learn me! The local chap phoned seconds later, absolutely livid.....He's convinced of impropriety too....Can anybody advise me what I should do? I don't want to sell to the winner if he's won at that price by foul means!

[Father Ted]

I thought you could only retract a bid up to 12 hours prior to the end. Obviously i am wrong then.Report it to fleebay via the help pages - then perhaps email the winner and tell him you have been advised not to sell by ebay, who are looking into the bidding and are checking the isp addresses of the bidders, or email him and tell him you backed the car over the bike by accident, but he can still have it at his high bid price if he wants...

[retrogeezer]

Nope, you supposedly can only withdraw an auction until there is 12 hours to go but I think you can get around that anyway.In future, if someone offers you a good cash offer locally before the auction ends take it! It's well worth it for the fees you will save which are now about 10% for most listings I think.What kind of feedback did the 'bid cancellation' bidder have? Post the link so we can have a look....Thing is, ebay will do absolutely nothing and the 'winning bidder' can leave you a neg with no fear of any comeback.

[Cavcraft]

Tricky that and I too thought you couldn't retact with minutes to go. Now, only reasons I can see why high bidder would ask a mate to bid on it would be because he decided he didn't want it and didn't want a bid retraction against his name. Either that or to make sure no-one else outbidded him and he's seen that off by effectively making sure no-one can. Problem there is why did he just not leave the fake bid on and then not bother contacting you, thus forcing you to second chance the next one down (i.e him on another account). Could you pm me a link to the listing, the retractor's username and the eventual winner's name please? I'll have a look at it and see if I can spot anything fishy.

[Mr Lobster]

Report it to eBay, but don't expect them to do much Explain to the 'winning bidder' there was some kind of dodgy bidding / retracting thing going on and that ebay have advised you to relist it.Then sell it to the local guy with the cash.Winning bidder ain't gonna be happy and you might get negged for it but theres not a great deal you can do about it.Selling cars and bikes on eBay can be a lot of hassle, you can get around it to an extent by insisting any bidders are preapproved but thats not foolproof. It is a very very good forum for selling some things - our business sells on ebay and does reasonably well out of it but there can be a lot of hassle.I've sold a couple of cars via eBay and in both instances pulled the auction early when someone has come around and offered me cash.

[nigel bickle]

That is an interesting one I've not heard of before..I agree it needs investigation -and I'd be very wary of the 'winning bidder'. I think I would sell to local chappie -and stuff the feedback.But -its your call. Use your gut instinct -good luck!

[Guest]

I'm baffled as to why eBay have set up this "Bidder 1" and "Bidder 2" thing on car auctions as that was the easiest way to catch out this kind of practice, what on earth was that supposed to achieve?

[r.welfare]

I think it was designed to stop shill bidding in that you wouldn't be able to see if your mate was high bidder, but eBay can, if you catch my drift. As usual, it just serves to make things more confusing for your average eBay punter.I've got a couple of sets of wheeltrims on there at the moment (finishing today), one set with a very high current price, be interesting to see if it all processes smoothly

[Baz]

Here are the details:Item no: 110299081999http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... :IT&ih=001Winning bidder: jcbdann (3 feedback)Retracting bidder: ramioppp (feedback hidden).

[mirafioriman]

As I understand the ebay bidding system when the bidder withdrew his bid the next highest bidder would become the winner. Your local chap then did not bid more than the eventual winner in the auction. If your reserve was met then you have got at least what you wanted for the bike, I think you should sell to the top bidder. If the local chap wanted it perhaps he should have bid more. At least it looks like you are going to get a sale. Worse than this is when the top bidder refuses to pay or collect like when I sold an engine for a good price and then ended up selling it for £100 less the next time I listed it thanks to a time waster from Newcastle.

[retrogeezer]

There's a tool here to check even hidden bidders feedback:http://toolhaus.org/

[Baz]

I think you should sell to the top bidder. If the local chap wanted it perhaps he should have bid more.

He would have, but was effectively blocked by this unrealistic bid....There is a definite moral issue here, and I'm not prepared to deal with dishonest people....To me, money is not just money....I'd rather take less for it, and feel happy with the deal....Maybe I'm not normal, but that's definitely my way of looking at things!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

your local man wouldnt have known that the bid was unrealistic would he though. he ought to have stuck his max bid in, if he was then the 2nd highest bidder it would have fallen back to his bid when the unrealistic one was withdrawn, I think thats the point.Whatever happened i dont know what this nobber was doing boshing in a high bid then withdrawing it again, must be indecisive or up to no good.

[Baz]

your local man wouldnt have known that the bid was unrealistic would he though.

He viewed the bike on Sunday....In order to win the auction, he'd have had to bid close to a thousand pounds for a bike clearly worth a little over half that....Therefore he didn't bid....My heart sank when I saw the high bid, as I wouldn't have been happy to sell the bike for that amount....It just isn't worth that!Like you say....Someone's up to no good....Well they're not having the bike....I can accept a negging when I know I occupy the moral high ground. If I was running some sort of Ebay business I may feel differently, but my selling activity will be very limited anyway!

[wuvvum]

You can retract a bid within the last 12 hours as long as you retract it less than 30 minutes after placing it. The fact that Bidder 8 retracted his bid 5 seconds from the end makes it pretty f*cking obvious that he was playing silly buggers. I'd say go to eBay with it - sometimes they respond, sometimes they don't, but it's worth a go.

[Cavcraft]

Just had a look at it and can't see an obvious connnection between bid retracting pin head and winning bidder. Not easy to call because pin head has hidden feedback and fair to assume they're not connected.Pinhead was very lucky though, he retracted his bid with five seconds left.Bidding id was hidden by ebay because (allegedly) people were e-mailing highest/second highest bidders offering similar items for less money away from ebay. All it's actually managed to do is promote schill bidding of course and the bent ones must be laughing all the way to the bank, especially after eBay seem to have gone back on their promise from circa 2006 that private feedback and private listings were being phased out.Private listings are always the sign of something dodgy by the way: either the item is nowhere near as described, their is schill bidding going on or it's some sort of fee or tax avoidance thing and thus, imho, all private listings should be avoided at all costs.Baz: I've pm'd you mucker. As I say no proof (or to be fair even reasonable suspicion) that winning bidder and bid retractor are working together, though I can see why you think they were and it does sound suspicious.

[carlo]

your local man wouldnt have known that the bid was unrealistic would he though.

He viewed the bike on Sunday....In order to win the auction, he'd have had to bid close to a thousand pounds for a bike clearly worth a little over half that....Therefore he didn't bid....My heart sank when I saw the high bid, as I wouldn't have been happy to sell the bike for that amount....It just isn't worth that!Like you say....Someone's up to no good....Well they're not having the bike....I can accept a negging when I know I occupy the moral high ground. If I was running some sort of Ebay business I may feel differently, but my selling activity will be very limited anyway!

I don't see how you could have known how high this 'rogue' bidder's bid was. All you would have been able to see was the current highest bid, anything between that and this bidder's max is hidden from everyone including you and your local man. Seems the key question is whether ebay actually stores any bid lower than the current highest one, in the possible event that the highest one is cancelled. There may have been skulduggery afoot, all I'm saying is that ebay may have measures in place to automatically counteract it.

[mirafioriman]

If the bid and retraction was a ploy to lower the price (although I can not work out in my mind how this would work) Whats to say it was not your local man who did this? And, as noted before the way ebay bidding works you don't know the max bid someone has put in as ebay only uses enough to ensure that person is the highest bidder. For the price to go up to a higher level two people have to bid against each other. To be morally correct, unless you can prove that the winning bidder has acted unfairly or dishonestly, you should sell to him/her for the agreed price. What if you were the buyer and you had won fair and square by bidding the highest value, and the seller refused to sell it to you for the sale price? As a buyer you would not be very happy would you?

[MrRegieRitmo]

My heart sank when I saw the high bid, as I wouldn't have been happy to sell the bike for that amount....It just isn't worth that!

If only more of civilisation thought like you!

[Father Ted]

Sorry for hijacking your thread but can I just say....Bloody borroking whazbags EBLOODYBAY again. Sold a mathmos lamp, first high bidder dint want it (oh why can I not leave negative feedback to warn others he is an illiterate monkey who cant read item descriptions and look at pictures). So, next bidder gets a second chance offering, which they take and pay, no they don't want postal insurance, so now its "gone missing" in the post they complain to paypal who then issue me with all sorts of nice threats about suspending my account or taking money from my credit card - nice one ebay. Thankfully I have the postage receipt. Then I sold a CB radio - last minute bidder who then didn't pay, then told me his credit card had expired and I would get the money Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday.... Filed and got a Non Paying Bidder strike against him and within seconds he had changed his user name. Sold the table to somone who said "oh yeah, I know where you are my mate did over the post office there...." Sold teh wardrobe to a chav windowlicker who (despite the auction giving very clear details where it was - still had to ask "where is the wardrobe then?") And binned the treadmill auction after phone calls from a bloke with a pronounced stutter saying where is Blackpool?, I live in Birmingham, can you bring it round? Another bloke of Asian persuasion who did not seem to understand the phrase "two hundred pounds" meant two hundred pounds, not fifty quid. And a succession of people all saying, "nahh, I will give you twenny qwid mhatey boy to take it off your hands..." Giving up the ebay selling malarky - and at 10% final value fees and payfuggingpal fees its just a damn rip off.

[Cavcraft]

Bloody right FT. I'm weaning myself off it now, trying not to sell stuff on there as a complete waste of time. There doesn't seem to be as much bargain stuff as there was but going through the backdoor gets some results and probably robs eBay of some profit too so can't be a bad thing.

[pogweasel]

Sounds like you're having a barrel of laughs there, Ted. And as for that bloke who bought your 'bangernomics' book, what a knob end! (PS - if you don't want to get battered for the paypal sting I'll send you a cheque if you'd prefer)I know what you mean about window-licking mongtards, I've seen & met them all... those that nit-pick, those that try to haggle you, those that can't comprehend how to use a map (or tell the time). It's frustrating, but remaining resolute is the best offer as there are still nice folk out there. Had a right 'mare trying to sell M-I-L's Corsa the other week. Loads of 'HI M8 OW MUCH FOR CASH' idiocy. Only one viewer, who was a decent enough chap but just didn't have enough budget (T-plate Corsa, £250, get off!). Then the winning bidder, who arrived after dark, ragged the nuts off the car before declaring the H/G was pooped because of mayo on the oil filler (Strange how the rest of the oil was clean, it kept perfect temperature, had bang-on compression etc)... So he went home empty handed. Second chance offer to the next down the list.... lady came along on her tod, professing to know FA about cars (but she liked the colour) - instant cash sale. Lovely.

[Father Ted]

Sounds like you're having a barrel of laughs there, Ted. And as for that bloke who bought your 'bangernomics' book, what a knob end! (PS - if you don't want to get battered for the paypal sting I'll send you a cheque if you'd prefer)

Aye, a cheque would be ace ( think I sent the address with the invoice) And just for that I will include some right prime age old car tat for you too as a special thank you for not paying with paypal.Mind you , now I know your name its taken all the mystery out of "Pog" and the mental immage of some Wilfred Brambles type character in a Hi-Viz has now been shattered.

[r.welfare]

Hey that Bangernomics book is great, usually use the "crib sheet" when I look at shonky old wrecks to this day. May well put Ruppert's new book about the downfall of the British motor industry on my Christmas list.

[mk2_craig]

In the early 90s I bought a copy out of the 50p bin in one of those Bargain Books places, what I found amusing at the time was the cover illustration resembled a Mk3 Cav which was launched only a couple of years previously

[Father Ted]

So the latest on the Mathmos lamp scenario is that whilst paypal have now suspended my account, any payments made from recent auctions are now being used by paypal to cover the £43 claim this woman has made - I have supplied evidence of posting and told paypal in no uncertain terms that their actions are illegal as as a private seller I have no liability for items lost in transit as long as I can prove postage - and this I have done. Its not my fault the buyer was too much of a tight arse to pay £1 for recorded delivery.