Was I Being Shill Bidded?

There was this ebay item where I thought of just bidding the minimum and no more just to try the waters. I was winning until midway and then someone with 0 feedback bid on it. I decided not to bid against them and they won. I was suspicious of this and thought that it was probably a shill bidder to drive the price up and get me into a bidding war. I decided to forget about this until I got a second chance offer on the item from the seller. This has even raised my suspicions more.

The second chance offer is the most suspicious aspect of this in my opinion. If a shill bid comes in just above your max bid, then the second chance offer to you will be at your max bid rather than whatever lower price it might have been had the shill not bid. I got caught by this once and didn't think it through until later.

Having 0 feedback doesn't necessarily mean shill, but if they said you can have this at your max bid you might try saying this: If that top bid hadn't come in my bid would have been one increment over the next highest bid. See if he'll take that price. If not you can be pretty sure this is not a dealer you want to deal with. If you post the specific item we might also be able to tell you since many of know the names of the more notorious dealers.

I nearly always use the "buy it now" option. No bidding wars and no suspicion that there is shill bidder (the seller trying to bump up the bid) or just a seller who had miscalculated interest in an item and removing it from sale.
In this case Id suspect a shill bidder.
While the buyer had no feedback, it might be interesting to see how the seller is rated.

A second chance offer frequently means that the seller has more than one of the same item and does not necessarily mean that there was a shill bidder. We all had a zero rating on E-Bay at one time. On literature Mr. Fancy Cancel will definitely offer second chances as he has more than one of an item. If an item is offered for Bidding and with a Buy it Now, I agree that if the price is fair, the item worth the money, and I would like it I don't try to buy it cheap. If I don't care whether or not I buy it, I bid what I want to pay, if it goes for more than that so be it. If there was one or two bids by the buyer I would say that he may know what he was doing. If there were multiple bids by the same bidder, then I might be concerned about a shill. There are also a lot of E-Bay buyers out there who are completely clueless as to what things are worth.

Here is the bidding history of an auction-only item I sold a few months back. Anyone looking at this history might suspect shill bidding but I know for a fact that this was not the case (since it was my item.)



I had received several offers to buy the item before the auction closed but politely turned them down. One person was very, very aggressive that I take his offer. After I turned him down the final time, all of a sudden I see the flurry of bids from two brand new accounts as shown above. Since this item was time sensitive, my fear was that these were revenge bids (revenge bidder would not pay, and dated item would expire). Luckily there was enough time for me to block these two bidders and the item went to a good eBayer.

But I can say for sure that there was no shill bidding even though the history appears fishy.
Don

I got shill bid a few times so now I don't chase after a item and never accept a second offer .If you note the item most likely you can see it again in a relisting a week later.