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Phantom Bids on EBay?

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Wheeled Relics

Cruisin' on my Bluebird
http://m.ebay.com/itm/371272890536?nav=WATCHING_ACTIVE

Watching this auction on eBay, I witnessed a bidding war 30minutes before auction end where the bids went up to 1600$... 2 minutes before the auction end, the bids somehow disappeared back to where it first started (300ish) ... auction ended just over 600. Can someone explain how this is possible, is it possible to retract bids after they are made without seller approval? Multiple witnesses saw this, and we're curious. It seems suspicious at best, and at worst purposeful manipulation of an auction.
 
maybe bid were placed, but the seller cancels bids from certain bidders, dropping the bids down to the last highest bidder?
Its been a while since I have sold on ebay but I thought you can cancel bids from suspicious bidders. So if your in cahoots perse, then...
 
I'm thinking if you make a bid, even at the end of the action, you can retract that bid right away. Not the same as bidding a day or so early and then retracting your bid a day or so later. Looks like he may have been a bidder from another country?

Member Id: s***o
Cancelled: US $44,100.00
Bid: Mar-09-15 19:24:21 PDT
Cancelled: Mar-09-15 20:03:33 PDT
 
this is an easy way to see how high someone has bid when they've bid multiple times.
Place an absurdly high bid (ie. 44,100.00) and you can see in what increments that C***C had bid and how high he had bid up to.
If you want to see a reserve just bid super high (1,000,000) and then quickly retract because you made a mistake (wink, wink).
 
In this particular case I think the bidder that retracted his super high bid made a huge error for some reason. His minimal ebay history is clean.

30-Day Summary
Total bids: 0
Items bid on: 0
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 0% Help
Bid retractions: 0
Bid retractions (6 months:( 0

Here's the skinny on retracting bids.

Time restrictions for retracting a bid

Auction ending time

Retraction allowed?

Result


Listing ends in more than 12 hours

Yes



When you retract the bid, we remove all bids you placed on the item. If you are correcting a bidding error, you must bid again.


Listing ends in less than 12 hours

Yes, but only if you retract the bid within one hour of placing it

When you retract the bid, we remove only your most recent bid. Bids you placed prior to the last 12 hours of the listing are not removed.



It sure isn't fun on ebay these days. It was a hoot when you knew who was bidding against you and what everyone was paying for there hobbies. ;)
 
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If someone retracts a bid, all bids made after that are automatically cancelled by Ebay. That's probably how several bids disappeared all of a sudden.
I'm not sure there actually is a time limit on retracting bids - I could be wrong.
 
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