I had the opposite of shill bidding happen to me and it caused my item to not sell.
I listed an item starting at .99c which turned out to be quite a desirable thing which surprised me. I had multiple people offering me buy it now prices
but I thought as I listed it as an auction I would do two things 1: let the best bid win keeping everyone happy and I was doing the right thing and 2: I might get more for it which at the end of the day thats why your selling in the first place right?
Well I start getting bids with 6 days to go and the price goes up to around $950.00 and im thinking wow this is crazy as people offered me around $500.00 by E-Mail etc. Then on the last day this guy starts bidding on my item it goes to $1000.00, $1500.00 $2000.00 and then $2300.00 and Im thinking is there something I am missing here with this figure?? any way I carry on with the sale and this guy bids one last time and still does not beat the guy who must have made a large bid before him. so my piece has been bid up to around $2360.00 and it is won.
Then the guy who won the auction emails me the next day and says: I have looked at the previous bids and it looks dodgy as there was about 17 bids all at the last few mins by the same bidder. This upped my price to nearly my maximum bid and it looks dodgy so I am not going to buy it now!! I explained that this was just another bidder trying to win it and im a little mad as im thinking hes just trying to back out etc. I hear nothing back from him so I report it to ebay and explain I am happy for them to investigate the bids etc etc as I had done nothing wrong. I eventually get a response from the winner after I had sent a few more messages saying ok he will trust me and buy it, but I was so upset at being called a cheat/scammer and having to wait for him to respond I declined the sale and kept the piece.
I was going to offer the bidder who placed all the bids before but them im thinking he's going to think like some of you have said above i bid it up and then offered it to him afterwords at an inflated price!
I really hate EBAY to be honest as you seem to get no protection as a seller and i worry all the time I am going to be scammed and now I have had this happen as well...........
