New to me at least. I am sure bidding up items at auction is the oldest scam going. I have noticed some watches sucessfully going through an auction and then reappearing in a brand new auction from the original seller within a couple of days. I would think that a situation with a non-payer would take more days to resolve itself.

Relating to this, I recently won an auction where I felt I paid a little too much. Upon closer inspection, the #2 and #3 top other bidders had very little feedback, and many of their previous bids going to other items from the original seller.

The Scam:

1. Create a couple of "phony" accounts to create a fake bidding war for watches or other items that you sell.
2. Bid the watch up to a level that you would be satisfied with the price. Also, create as many bids as possible to indicate great interest among buyers in the watch.
3. Hope one or two "suckers" try to scoop up the watch at the last second
4. If the scam doesn't work, cancel the sale and repeat.

In effect, the seller is creating a manipulated starting price that would be necessary to win the auction. The fake number of bids will entice other bidders to bid on the watch. The price discovery via the auction is not legit. A small "crime" in the big picture of things. I willingly bid on an item so I can't really complain. However, between this and the Ebay sales tax, this Ebay transaction was not the best.

 

What you are referring to is shill bidding and it is most likely illegal and violates eBay policy.
Definition:

"In most uses, shill refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers, participants or "marks" the impression of an enthusiastic customer independent of the seller, marketer or con artist, for whom they are secretly working. The person or group in league with the shill relies on crowd psychology to encourage other onlookers or audience members to do business with the seller or accept the ideas they are promoting. Shills may be employed by salespeople and professional marketing campaigns.
Shilling is illegal in many circumstances and in many jurisdictions[1] because of the potential for fraud and damage; however, if a shill does not place uninformed parties at a risk of loss, but merely generates "buzz", the shill's actions may be legal. For example, a person planted in an audience to laugh and applaud when desired (see claque), or to participate in on-stage activities as a "random member of the audience", is a type of legal shill."

Regardless, after you've done your diligent research, set the price YOU are willingly to pay for the item and pay no heed to others. Don't get caught up in winning the auction and turning it into a competition. That is when crazy prices happen. Stick to your price and if it goes over...pass.

 

New?

You just noticed. There are a lot of shenanigans on eBay.

This.

 

its called shilling the bid. old scam.
if ebay catches you doing this, you get your account closed.
he has friends or multiple accounts that increase the bid to ensure the watch doesnt sell too low and so he doesnt have to use a reserve (which costs extra fees)...

 

You mean there's gambling in Casablanca?????

 

I have noticed many auctions ends with a winning bid and then the same watch comes up as a firm price listing by the same seller in the winning bid price area.

Whats up with that?

 

Well, I am glad to read I am not the only one feeling there is something wrong with the eBay auctions lately...

 

Ebay does have software to identify shill bidding and they will go after all participants. The fact that they are bidding on multiple items by the seller indicates the fraud. I thought you can no longer see the handles for bidders on other people's auctions, how do you know they are bidding on multiple listings?
I will add that I have had bidders message me right after a winning bid and say they bid on accident or overbid or something stupid like "my kid got into my account!", and so I always cancel the transaction right away and relist. There's no point trying to force these sales as they will just dispute it and you could lose the item and your money.

 

At the end of the day set the price you want to pay and forget about it. If you win you have it for your price.

 

Until someone paid 5 bucks more than your bid and ended up wining the item...

 

THIS could be the start of a..........

 

I never feel regret in these situations because you never know what their total bid was, eBay only bids in increments so if you bid $400 and somebody won at $405, it very possible they put a bid in at $1,000 and got it for the $405. That's exactly why people say "bid what you're comfortable bidding" because only then can you avoid irrationally chasing bids in the last few minutes and going way over your intended offer.

 

This is an EXTREMELY old scam. probably the first scam on ebay. I'm sorry if you were victim to this. It really sucks. Ebay called me once to warn of an auction fraud.

Me, "how do you know?"

Ebay, "they offered more than your buy it now price"

 

You can't tell anymore who's bidding... You used to be able to but they hide the bidders now. I remember making 2nd Chance offers to the highest second bidder if I had more than one of the item, most just sent PayPal and there were no final value fees!) eBay started a 2nd chance offer thing if someone didn't pay but I believe they did away with that as well.
eBay used to be cheap and easy way to sell your (junk). it's gotten so expensive over the years (over 13% w PayPal fees) plus listing fees so lately I only sell stuff I would normally just pitch... I'd never buy a watch on eBay unless it was coming from an actual dealer that I could call... Too many scams which is too bad.

 

You do not know the exact bidder, but you can extract some info about the bidding action. Bidders with a low number of transactions are suspicious. You can also get a 30-day bid history of the bidder.

 

I assume any account with few purchases who bids in small increments is a shill. It's got to the point where people should refuse to bid until the last 5 minutes, or seconds, just so the shills don't have time to do anything.

 

This is also a reason for sniping. If you bid early, cheating sellers will use shill bidding to bump your bid higher.

 

I typically will place an Ebay max bid in the last 10 seconds. One time I bid at 10 seconds and was the high bidder. The other bidder still had time for a final bid, and I lost the auction. One time I placed a bid at 3 seconds and it did not get processed in time.

 

When I find a watch I'm interested in. Research (and repeat). I determine my max price and place the bid 5 sec before the auction ends. There have been problems with the ebay "timer" that shows on the confirm bid page. I use a separate clock synchronized to the original auction clock.

Getting caught up in the bidding whirl wind is behind me now

If the seller wants to shill bid me up, that's fine. My max price is set.

 

Good point, on things I really want I snipe at +10-sec. Sometimes if you lose a bid in these last moments it's because your competitor is using sniping software. eBay allows both. https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/bidding/bid-sniping?id=4224