Hey guys have been on ebay since 2002 and truthfully never had to compete with a shill bidder until last night. placed a high bid since i wasnt sure id be able to last minute bid in the morning (the auction ended at a dumb time). At 3am, someone walked up the bid $5 at a time until they got the high bid and then retracted immediately. In the bid history, it shows this person did the same thing for 5 different auctions, all with a retraction at the end. it also caused the item to end up $30 more expensive than it should have been. not life changing money but enough to annoy me lol do i reach out to the seller?do i call ebay? whats the process on this? the seller has 30k+ feedback and only 2 negatives, neither related to shilling. thanks for any help
This is called string bidding. It is super hot right now. Basically it’s when an account bids the price up to see the current bid, then retract. There really isn’t anything you can do as eBay is completely useless for these type of scenarios. Considering the circumstances this doesn’t sound related to the seller.
Thanks. That’s ultra annoying. Why does someone bother string bidding? What’s the point?
Is retracting that easy? I mean, that is not really the point with bidding on Ebay right?
Unfortunately it is pretty easy. Mistakes definitely occur, which is why its an option. However I can count on one hand the total amount of retractions I’ve had as a buyer over 10 years. The new accounts with numerous retractions are typically shade city.
Isn’t here some time limit on ebay policy, that bidder can’t retract if bid is placed like with in 12 hours befour auction ends?
Probably not. Retracting a bid is possible for people who made a typo. Let’s say you want to bid 100 on an item, but accidentally bid 1000. Then it’s possible to retract a bid stating you entered the wrong amount. Normally you should then immediately bid again for the correct amount, but eBay doesn’t enforce it…
There are some other reasons to retract a bid, but not sure what those reasons were anymore. I know this one because I once did enter a wrong amount. So I used this option, and immediately bid the correct amount afterwards.
There might be a limit to how many times you retract a bid for this reason however… I’m sure eBay keeps some kind of record on how many times someone retracts a bid for whatever reason, since it shouldn’t be possible of course. I’m extra careful I enter a correct amount on other websites where retracting a bid isn’t possible because of that.
Greetz,
Quuador
Ok I see. Well how about next scenario: I’m willing to buy just 1 card, lets say worth 2k. There is multiple on auction ending at same time. I bid to one off them, then some one bid over my bid, Ok
I choose max bid to the another copy. Then someone retract bid from copy #1. In the end I win both 2 copies because off that. I guess technically I’m forced to pay 2 copies after that? Doesn’t sounds realy fair to me…
Just another reason why ending items at the same time is almost always brutal for everyone involved.
This is another reason to use something like Gixen.
If you use this kind of service:
1-you don’t need to stay awake waiting for the end of the auction to place your bid
2-you avoid string bidding
Hope this helps! (Although this doesn’t answer to the title 
)
I agree, but unfortunately it happens. I see retracted bids pretty often, especially with shill bidders. It’s kinda like getting those second-chance offers a day after you’ve already lost. Those are usually also shill bidders (not always, though).
Then again, if I would be in the situation you’ve described, I would retract my bid on one of those as well… It wouldn’t be fair to the seller, but in your situation I don’t see another option besides paying both. eBay made these retract options available, no matter if there is a valid reason or not, so they’re the one to complain to.
I would personally prefer if there indeed isn’t an option to retract a bid at all. That way people wouldn’t shill bid as much, and also think more carefully before pushing confirm on their bids… If you then accidentally bid 1000 USD instead of 100 and win it for let’s say 200+ USD, you’ll just have to suck it up, since you’ve made a mistake yourself.
But unfortunately I can’t change it, and it is what it is. Retracting bids is possible. Shill bidding is possible. But what can we do about it? I dunno.
Greetz,
Quuador
This happens more often than you would expect, and as Scott said, eBay do absolutely nothing.
There is a guy in the UK that shill bids his cards up on EVERY card with a second account I presume. And if his shilling doesn’t work, he just does not send the card. Proper piece of *bleep*
He even goes as far as to leave himself positive feedback from the secondary account to make him look good. Not coincidental that he has bought about 40% of his own items for sale.
I’ve reported him numerous times, still happens. Name is pok.3.mon if anyone cares to check out the profile, embarrassing that they continue to get away with it!
This used to frustrate me. I would put a high bid or a bid I was comfortable paying as a final offer and do it fairly early, only to see this shit happened. I feel like bidding to the point where you are winning at any point prior to the last 5 minutes of an auction is just you doing yourself a disservice. You’re basically bidding against yourself thanks to these people. If you snipe, you don’t deal with string bidders because you don’t give them a baseline to shill/string up during the regular days/hours of the auction. Instead, when you snipe, you’re putting that high bid at the end and if it’s good enough to win, you win.
Please link the listing.
You can:
Back out of the win.
Leave Negative feedback explaining you were string shill bid up.
Quit bidding…snipe.
Life hack that will let you never worry about shill bidding ever again:
- only bid in the final seconds (or use Gixen)
- only bid what you are comfortable paying
This way, you minimize the potential for the seller to shill up to your max bid. Even if they manage to do something in the final seconds, you’re still paying something you would be happy to pay whether the competing bids were 100% organic or not.
I think I had this happen to me a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that one bidder had retracted their offer two or three times on one of my auctions, and then in my last round of auctions my incoming payment was put on hold (I thought that was odd because I have perfect feedback, but I figured it was because I was selling high $ items). Should I contact ebay about this? I guess I figured that the bidder was just super indecisive (but in my defense, I have had to deal with several UPIC in the last few months).
UPDATE: My payment was put on hold because my paypal email address was changed. I definitely don’t remember changing it, but it was still one of my email accounts. So end of story, I’m just dumb.
I saw this guy list his neo destiny box again. No wonders why.
Yeah, you got it. I called him out on Insta, people started saying I was wrong bla bla. Doubt he will be announcing that on Insta again that he relisted it. Embarassing.
Not sure you will find more gullible people than on Instagram.
Like when that one guy claimed to have found a bunch of Arita and Sugimori autographed cards at some random garage sale and everyone actually believed him.