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Item lost for unknown reason

 
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astefano
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:31 am    Post subject: Item lost for unknown reason Reply with quote

Hi, I am an happy Gixen user and never had any problem with it.
This time however I lost even if my bid was 15€ higher than the last bid.

Can´t explain it.

It was ebay 192319816106. It was sold at 76€ even if my bid was over 90 and all I got was "BID UNDER ASKING PRICE" message.

(I´d have liked to post an image of my message but I do not know how to do it)

Please help ? Thank you!
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Cupid



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 7567
Location: Bristol, UK

PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was a bid of EUR 166.00 that was retracted 8 seconds before the auction finished at 9 Oct 2017 at 9:31:44AM BST, look on the bids page here;

Code:
a***t(2)   Retracted:EUR 166.00 Bid:9 Oct 2017 at 8:37:29AM BST
                                                 Retracted:9 Oct 2017 at 9:31:36AM BST


This would have meant that the auction price was above your maximum just before that auction ended.

If it is was me, I would suspect bid shielding, which is against Ebays' rules, and I would report it to them. I'd also let the seller know that I was willing to pay more than they got for it, and thus that they would have been paid more had this activity not occurred.

Here is a summary of the bidder that retracted their bids activity, which you can get by clicking on the link that represents that id:

Code:
30-Day Summary
Total bids:    14
Items bid on:    3
Bid activity (%) with this seller:    7%
Bid retractions:    1
Bid retractions (6 months):    6


That is pretty conclusive proof that this Ebay id is being used for dubiuos activity and should thus be sanctioned by Ebay.
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juangrande



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 890
Location: San Diego, California, USA

PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very interesting! I learned something, Mark.

Apparently the high bidder, i***y(1260), bid more than EUR 91 so that when his alternate bid-shielding ID, a***t(2), bid EUR 166, the EUR 91 bid that astefano made was rejected as "BID UNDER ASKING PRICE" and not even recorded on eBay. Wow.

If anyone reading this is still interested, this is how the bid shielding worked. For purposes of illustration, let's say that i***y(1260)'s actual bid was EUR 165. (We can't tell what it actually was, but presumably it was near the retracted bid in order to block legitimate bids.)

Then, since the bid increment at that level is EUR 1.00, the bidding history before a***t(2)'s bid was retracted would have looked like this:

Code:

Bidder       Bid amount       Bid time
a***t(2)     EUR 166.00       9 Oct 2017 at 8:37:29AM BST
i***y(1260)  EUR 165.00       9 Oct 2017 at 8:33:38AM BST
s***k(49)    EUR  75.00       8 Oct 2017 at 3:45:55PM BST
d***o(461)   EUR  75.00       9 Oct 2017 at 6:17:55AM BST
x***a(248)   EUR  67.00       6 Oct 2017 at 7:37:10AM BST


Then, when astefano's bid of EUR 91.00 came in, it was rejected by eBay as being "under the asking price" of EUR 165.00 (based on the hypothesized size of i***y(1260)'s actual bid).

Notice that i***y(1260)'s bid and a***t(2)'s bid are less than 4 minutes apart. Also notice that this scheme would block all legitimate bids less than EUR 166.00 and that when a***t(2)'s bid is retracted, the winning bid drops to EUR 76.00 (as indicated in the final bidding history referenced above). As you pointed out, Mark, the fraudulent bidding collusion is obvious.

Since a***t(2)'s bid was retracted at 9 Oct 2017 at 9:31:36AM BST, 8 seconds before the auction ended, an offset of 6 seconds or less would have thwarted the bid shielding.

I also wonder if eBay has ever considered altering their system to keep a record of all bids within, say, the last minute of an auction (even if under the asking price) to mitigate situations like this.
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Cupid



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 7567
Location: Bristol, UK

PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 2:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unfortunately, I don't think a lower offset would have helped because, in order to avoid too many unnecessary requests to Ebay I think Gixen does a check, prior to initiating the whole sniping process, that the price is such that it is worthwhile to proceed with the snipe.

This is why if you update your snipes page, by pushing the 'Add' button without entering any details, in the last couple of minutes of an auction, you occasionally find a 'BID UNDER ASKING PRICE' status is provided for the snipe before the auction is even completed. Perhaps with the new integrated sniping system this extra step should be disabled... Perhaps Mario already has?... But, if so, he hasn't reported that he has done so here, yet.

The only real remedy is to get the users that use such tactics banned from using Ebay, and I think that will only happen if people report them for doing it.

In my opinion there is also a lot more that Ebay could, and should, be doing to automatically detect this behaviour and sanction all accounts involved in it.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 2:15 am    Post subject:

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Astefano
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow it took me a while to understand this one.
So if I get it right until 8 seconda to the end the bid was (say) 165 and suddenly it dropped to 76 as soon as the one at 166 was cancelled.
Wow that was clever. The seller must have loved to see this happening live. Yes I will definitely report this to eBay.
Thank you so much!
PS was it not once impossible to retract bids within the last 12 hours before the end? Do I remember it wrong?
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Cupid



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
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Location: Bristol, UK

PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You are correct that it was impossible to retract earlier bids within the last few hours of an auction.

In fact it may still be the case, however, it is now possible to retract bids that have only been placed within the past hour... This opens the loophole that this buyer is exploiting.
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Last edited by Cupid on Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:36 am; edited 1 time in total
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juangrande



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 890
Location: San Diego, California, USA

PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, Mark, for your explanation of why having a smaller offset would not have helped.

For the record, here is the link to eBay's bid retraction rules:
http://pages.ebay.com/ebaymotors/help/buyerguide/bidding-retract.html

I actually tried to find a way to alert eBay about this auction, and was unable to find a way to do it. eBay makes it very difficult to report this sort of thing by its many filters.

In fact, the OP would not be able to report it, since their bid was not even recorded and thus they would not be recognized as a buyer.

Alerting the seller in the hope they would report it appears the only avenue to report this to eBay.

If I'm missing something, Mark, please let us know.
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Cupid



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
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Location: Bristol, UK

PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In the UK, I use 'Chat with us' that I access here:

https://ocsnext.ebay.co.uk/ocs/cusr?query=1456&levelHierarchy=1a1a1

In the US the equivalent appears to be:

https://ocsnext.ebay.com/ocs/cusr?query=1456&levelHierarchy=1a1a1

You get to these via the 'Contact Us' links on the Ebay home page

Perhaps someone also needs to start a campaign about this on the Ebay discussion forums, they do occasionally take notice of that if enough people start complaining about something.
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astefano
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi, Just tested the chat with ebay. Nope.
Thanks anyway... Surprised(

---

Jomar23:09 PM
Thank you so much for patiently waiting. I'm finished checking your report and I can see that there's no shillbidding practice that is going on in this auction. Sometimes, what appears to be Shill Bidding may actually be legitimate bidding and, if we find there's not enough evidence of Shill Bidding, which is the case here, we do not take action against any of the reported accounts.
In many cases, a bidder enters a maximum amount for a bid and the system then bids for them until their maximum is reached. If you see that you are automatically been outbid, this is usually the reason: the system is bidding for the other member.

23:10 PM
Ok Jomar. Thanks for checking this out for me anyway
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Cupid



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 7567
Location: Bristol, UK

PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You can take a horse to water... but you can't make it drink.

Buy the way, it isn't 'shill' bidding that they should have been investigating (or that you reported, no doubt ?), that is where a seller bids on their own items, in order to push the price up by getting others to bid against them in order to try to win. I agree there is no suspicion of that happening here, the seller was the one that lost out the most, due to this activity, they certainly would not have done this themself...

No, this is 'bid shielding', which is the use of two or more buyer accounts in order to manipulate the final price of the auction to the advantage of that buyer.
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juangrande



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PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 5:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's frustrating when eBay personnel don't even know the difference between bid shielding and shill bidding. Perhaps it would have helped Jomar to be given a link to this thread.
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If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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Astefano
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

well I did not give the direct link to this post (I suspect that sniping is not a very welcome practice by eBay either...) but copy-pasted most of what was said here.

Unfortunately it did not help.
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Cupid



Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 7567
Location: Bristol, UK

PostPosted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 2:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sniping is not a practice that Ebay provide on their own platform, however they do recognise it 'as part of the Ebay experience'...

After all, every price rise on an auction generates extra revenue for them.

So, going forward, I don't think there is any harm for users to reveal their use of this service to Ebay staff.

Thank you for trying, that was very public spirited of you, something, thankfully, we do not appear to be lacking here on Gixen.

We can do no more than share our observations and knowledge with Ebay... If they choose not to heed our recommendations then ultimately it will the Ebay platform that suffers from being bought into disrepute by a small minority of its users.
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