Bizarre eBay Behaviour?

Theophany

Theophany

Theophany

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Joined
1 Sep 2010
Posts
11,217
Hey gang

So I have a relatively high price tag item on eBay at the moment (won't link it for fear of reprisal) that has been on for 36 hours. It's a 10 day auction with a reserve and Buy-it-Now option.

What concerns me is that whilst looking through the current bid history, something doesn't seem at all right. Aside from the two initial bids (to £100), the most recent 13 bids have been done by 3 users, 2 of whom have 0 feedback and have accounts registered today and the third of whom has 1 feedback and has been registered since 2005.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert analyst for eBay auctions, but from £0.99 to a current high bid of £620 in the first 36 hours of a 10 day auction seems very odd - surely this is the kind of bidding pattern you'd expect in the last 12-24 hours of an auction? What makes it even odder is that the suspect bids all occurred rather rapidly from 2am last night. Some of the rapidness can be attributed to automatic bidding, I know, but it still feels like something is off.

I'm pretty damn strict with my listings, for example; I hide listings from viewers anywhere but mainland UK and Northern Ireland, disallow bidders with any negative feedback recently, disallow bidders without a CC on file, disallow bidders without a linked PayPal account etc etc.

Maybe I'm being overly suspicious (been scammed out of a shedload of cash before during my even more naive youth) and it is entirely possible that they are legit bidders just pushing up the value to see how high the reserve price is (£850, £950 Buy-it-Now) but again, this doesn't seem like normal bidding behaviour for the first day and a half of a 10 day auction...

Any thoughts? I'm tempted to cancel their bids out of pure suspicion, but this is against eBay policy.
 
Hi

Ive cancelled bids the ngiven any old reason and nothing has ahppened. Wht may happen is that someone will bid high on your item and make sure they win it. Then after you have posted they will file an unauthorised transaction claim and claim thier money back

This happened to a freind of mine a few years ago when the SE K750is were going for silly prices. A few accounts got the price upto £360 and he never saw the phone or money again

Cancel all the bids by 0 feedbacks. i always do this
 
Should have set the auction up to have a min feedback amount - i.e. bar all users from bidding who have a feedback <10.
 
I request contact details from anyone wishing to bid with less than a pre-defined feedback and state their bids will be cancelled if this request isnt honoured. If a genuine new bidder wants to bid they shouldnt have an issue with this reasonable request. I would cancel the auction and start again as they sound very dodgy. I would always be suspicious of new account bidding same day as set-up:eek:
 
As long as they pay instantly by paypal then it'll be alright. Make sure the item is sent recorded delivery or better (as it would with a high value item anyway) and say no returns.
 
To be honest mate I'd cancel the suspicious bids. The high price your item is at now may deter potential legitimate bidders. It's a hard one, but as the old saying goes, better to be safe than sorry.
 
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