Incorrect bid under asking price

[Dunkers]

Item: 405144907049
Title: Bausch & Lomb Ray-Ban W3113 Mirrored Cutters Wrap Sunglasses + Case
Seller: phden_8263
Status (main): BID UNDER ASKING PRICE
Status (mirror): BID UNDER ASKING PRICE
Your maximum bid: 31.34
Current price: 11.50

So why didn't Gixen bid on this? My maximum is clearly higher than the current price (which is the closing price).

Rather annoyed since I've waited literally years for these to come up and if I'd had any doubt about Gixen doing this better than me I'd've done in manually

[mario]

This listing had a retracted bid of 122. See https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/405144907049 and scroll to the bottom. This prevented your bid from being placed.

This practice is known as bid shielding. Read more about it here: https://gixen.com/blog/bid-shielding-ebay/

Gixen tries to fight this, but this retraction was done at the very last second.

The seller should refuse to sell and re-list this item.

[Cupid]

I agree, that's one of the most blatant uses of bid shielding I've seen, with the shield placed just seconds after an hour before the auction ended the intent was very clear from that point onwards.

Certainly should be reported to Ebay, they really should do better to counter this threat to sellers (and even their own) income.

It's not a one off either, if you click on the id of the bid retraction you get this, which shows:

30-Day Summary

Total bids: 31
Items bid on: 27
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 3%
Bid retractions: 33
Bid retractions (12 months): 111

Ridiculous that Ebay have not banned this id from using their site for auction manipulation, which IS against their rules.
_________________
Mark

[Dunkers]

Thanks very much, both. It's a new one on me, but no doubt I will be seeing more of it

I've messaged the vendor with an obfuscated link to here, but will anything happen? Ha! It's Ebay...

[Gixen]

[Guest]

So, I tried to report this to Ebay but couldn't find any way to contact them. Eventually I wound up in their user forum as the only contact means, and hoped a moderator would escalate to a responsible person. Unfortunately, the mods aren't easy to convince there is a problem, and when they do realise it they have no authority or power to do anything.

Most people seem to be unaware that this is either happening, or that it can be done - the obvious response is that you can't retract a bid within 12 hours of auction end, and certainly not in the last second. For most bidders, they would see the high price and be unable to place a lower bid, and just figure someone has more money than sense.

I was contacted via PM by a seller who thinks he has this done to him, but he never realised until he saw my post. With no way to get to Ebay, this is a problem that's going to get worse, and already I am reconsidering putting stuff up for sale on there (having a clearout of some expensive kit).

[Cupid]

You can't retract a bid that you've placed days before in the last 12 hours of an auction...

However, as you've seen, that doesn't resolve the issue because you still can retract a bid that you've placed within 1 hour... So bid shielding in the last hour is not difficult.. and, in this case, the timing is so good, I'd suspect it's now even being automated... and if that's the case and Ebay continue not to take any measures to address the situation (or even listen to their users when they point it out) then we will start seeing more and more of it.

BTW the best way to report issues to Ebay is via their customer support... but as a buyer, without you winning an auction, I accept it can be difficult to get them to take you seriously. Often they'll take you a bit more seriously if you're the seller in this kind of situation.
_________________
Mark

[Dunkers]

Customer support where? So far as I can see, all roads lead to context specific chatbots.

[mario]

If you can contact the seller, that's the way to go as seller can then contact eBay. In fact, it's the seller that suffered the most damage here.

[Cupid]