Bidding on your own auction

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Sean

He has retracted 42 bids in the last 6 months. How is this allowed?

I don't know. Seems to me, all bids are good bids according to Ebay.

Does anybody think it's a coincidence that about the same time Ebay made bidding accounts largely anonymous, they also lifted restrictions on bid retractions?

When a bidder has that many retractions it means one of two things. They are shilling auctions or they are tampering with auctions. Not good for buyers or sellers in the overall scheme of things.

I don't mind making bidders names anonymous, because many bidders prefer to stay anonymous if possible...........that generally holds for any type of auction.

However, to make the habitual act of retracting bids an accepted part of the auction process, strikes me as Ebay putting their head in the sand as a way of defending themselves by telling people "we didn't know these types of practices were going on." It's their way of not having to deal with the problem.

Sure, they have rules against "shilling" and "tampering with auctions", but they rarely ever acknowledge it, except in very extreme and blatant circumstances.

[Butch7999]

Trivia, just for the record:

-- "masked" eBay IDs do not always come up the same for the same bidder (although they're consistent within any single auction).
Our eBay ID has shown up masked a couple of different ways.

-- a "masked" ID can represent any number of eBay bidders -- there are only about 1,600 possible two-character combinations.

[smtjoy]

Well all I can say is mine show up the same and have so for a long time (and I checked about 20 more purchases too) -


2/4/10 eBay Image macbruce11 y***t 12 $261.00

11/28/10 eBay Image davidbvintage y***t 1 $22.00

10/23/11 eBay Image cardsandbrowns y***t 9 $47.00

12/8/12 eBay Auction | Image dslsports y***t 9 $5.50

[MW1]

Originally Posted by Butch7999

Trivia, just for the record:

-- "masked" eBay IDs do not always come up the same for the same bidder (although they're consistent within any single auction).
Our eBay ID has shown up masked a couple of different ways.

-- a "masked" ID can represent any number of eBay bidders -- there are only about 1,600 possible two-character combinations.

Butch,

Can you provide an example?