As I've said before, this isn't something that just shillers or consignors do.
I just had a guy retract a bid on one of my items here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=330927451070
........and did a little investigating as I always do when I have a retraction, before deciding to block him.
His Ebay ID is godofwar2000. Looking at his bid history, I would suggest anybody who sells boxing memorabilia or movie posters to block him.
It looks like he is using retractions as a bidding strategy to scare other bidders away and make them think the seller is shilling the auction, and often he will come back and bid again. I've seen several auctions he has retracted twice, and then come back and placed a winning bid...........and then sometimes he just disappears, I guess deciding he has already wrecked enough havoc on the auction lot.
That's not to say he's not also shilling for another account, but I haven't figured that out yet. Looks like he is spreading his bids around pretty haphazardly.
Why Ebay doesn't call this auction interference and clamp down on this type of behavior, I don't know. 1 or 2 retractions a year for honest mistakes maybe. This guy has 147 in the last six months.
