It's only shill bidding if the bidder is a friend of the seller and doing it to increase the sale price. If it's a general random member of the public just pushing up the price to find out how high you're gonna go there's nothing anyone will do about it. That's one of the pitfalls of setting your maximum bid early and not waiting until the last minute.

You could ask eBay to investigate, or complain to the seller, but the odds are that neither will result in anything positive. You could also just refuse to pay point blank and take the unpaid item strike. It's no big deal if you go down that route.

And FWIW... is $23.00 too high for (what looks like) a first printing Dungeon boardgame?

ashmire13 wrote:I'd agree it looks suspicious due to the bidding timing, but how'd they know the maximum? Is there an indicator if they were the second bidder?

When the item price is in the $5.00 to $24.99 range, the minimum bid increment is $0.50.  When the second bidder bid $23.00 and the item price didn't rise to $23.50 (their max bid plus the minimum increment) it meant that the first bidder was at their maximum bid.

Maybe I'm wrong, having sold very few things on eBay and never having watched the auction until I get the email saying it was over, but can't the seller see the highest bid?

serleran wrote:Maybe I'm wrong, having sold very few things on eBay and never having watched the auction until I get the email saying it was over, but can't the seller see the highest bid?

I believe the seller can see what everyone else sees.  The highest bid, but not necessarily the maximum bid of the first bidder -- unless "exposed" as explained above by g026r.  

As soon as the second bidder bid $23, everyone would know that ifearyeti's maximum bid was $23.00, and if the second bidder was trying to win the auction, they could have done so by bidding $23.50 or more.

Shill or not, it's clear the second bidder wasn't trying to win the auction.  They just drove the price up and then stopped when it was apparent that they would win if they pushed it any higher.

Clicking on the bidder's eBay handle indicates that only 1% of his 30-day activity has been with this seller.

Has a lot of feedback though. All you know is they have 2x P in their sig? I wonder who that could be? I bet BClarkie could figure it out.

Mars wrote:I get the feeling it is a shill as well.  The bidder has 3 bid retractions in the last little while - not sure if he used one on this auction or not.  Chances are Ebay will not do anything about it.

Was it this person? I don't know if Ebay changed the naming scheme to be more random now.



http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... world=true

misterspock wrote:

Was it this person? I don't know if Ebay changed the naming scheme to be more random now.

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... world=true

Nope.

The name must contain two letter P's. The random designation is selected from two letters numbers or symbols from the chosen eBay ID.



The guy may have bid up to a tipping point and found that the you were bidding at about the same price point he was going to bid at. It would have sat in his eBay list of win/lose items, and he may have just missed the end of the auction where he intended to tip it over the edge. It would appear that you also missed the end of the auction, because when I see my bid being pushed to the max I've set, I usually am there at the end to up my bid and clinch the buy.



Either way, it's a good price if it's complete, and it's what you were willing to pay, so unless you can demonstrate that the seller got a friend to up the price for him, there's no nefarious act here.