Another Probstein LOL

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I sell hundreds of items per week on ebay...I don't get as many retractions as Probstein...probably only about 1/100th the amount he gets, but I believe some of these people with huge numbers of retractions are trying to see the high bid of the current high bidder...they bid up to it and then retract hoping to snipe it at the end. I don't watch my auctions 24/7 so sometimes I will see after an item has ended that someone has retracted a bid, and that same person won the auction.

I don't sell hundreds of items per week, but yes, I've said it before. Many are now using retractions as a bid strategy to scare off other bidders.

Last guy who retracted a bid from one of my auctions, had a lot of retractions, so I blocked him. Got a message from him a day later, "I don't understand, I tried to bid and it said I'm blocked".

I told him it made me look like I was shilling the auction when he did that. He responded with apologies and told me he had no idea that's how it looked to others. I have a feeling he knew exactly how it looked.

I can't control how others behave on the rest of Ebay, and I'm not going to weed out everybody who is putting in retracting bids in other places, but I can somewhat control how bidders are behaving in MY auctions.

[Acollector]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I don't sell hundreds of items per week, but yes, I've said it before. Many are now using retractions as a bid strategy to scare off other bidders.

Last guy who retracted a bid from one of my auctions, had a lot of retractions, so I blocked him. Got a message from him a day later, "I don't understand, I tried to bid and it said I'm blocked".

I told him it made me look like I was shilling the auction when he did that. He responded with apologies and told me he had no idea that's how it looked to others. I have a feeling he knew exactly how it looked.

I can't control how others behave on the rest of Ebay, and I'm not going to weed out everybody who is putting in retracting bids in other places, but I can somewhat control how bidders are behaving in MY auctions.

I was bidding on a Dewalt rotary hammer for some work I needed to do on my house, so I started bidding on one. Suddenly this zero feedback, less than a month old account outbids me. I outbid before I looked at the bidding history. Both times the outbidding was almost immediately after mine i.e. less than a minute. I went and bid a third time and it happened to be the limit. I was testing to see if it was a shill, and at the same time that was the most I was going to pay, which was under what they were normally selling, so I said what the hell, let's see what happens. If I win, I get it at the level I was going to go anyway and will buy it. I get outbid a 3rd time by that same account. I left it at that. About 30 minutes after the auction ended, surprise, surprise, the seller emails me saying the buyer changed his mind and left me a second chance offer at my highest bid. The winner was that zero feedback bidder. Normally I say to someone that sends me a second chance offer, "why should I have to pay my highest bid, when if that guy who didn't pay hadn't bid, I would have won at a lower price?" I looked at this zero bidder and he had about 50 bids and 100% of them with this seller. I told the seller to run that shill scam with someone stupid enough to fall for it. He never responded. Does his not responding to an incriminating accusation sound familiar? Hint, we have been talking about someone similar that ignores incriminating questions. Shill bidding and lowlife sellers don't only exist in sports collectible auctions unfortunately. They are everywhere.

[Peter_Spaeth]

There was probably shill bidding in the Agora.

[Acollector]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

There was probably shill bidding in the Agora.

I could see someone from Crete shill bidding someone from Athens because the Athenian kept winning everything.

[judsonhamlin]

Carthage shillenda est!

[vintagechris]

Is there a way for sellers to see how many times bidders have retracted bids in their auctions?

Also, do get an email from ebay when someone retracts a bid?

[HRBAKER]

Veni, vidi, schillichi!

[Acollector]

Originally Posted by vintagechris

Is there a way for sellers to see how many times bidders have retracted bids in their auctions?

Also, do get an email from ebay when someone retracts a bid?

The retracting bidder, the other bidders and the seller all get an email from ebay that a bid was retracted.

The sellers would get an email for each retraction that bidder had, and it would show the retractions in the bid history.