Ebay "second chance" scam

[1orion2many]

I had an item I was bidding on taken past my Max bid, The person then had their bid cancelled leaving me at my maximum instead of being lowered back down to what it was before that person bid, I can't remember if I won the auction but it seemed a little sussed when this happened at the time. The auction was still on going when that person cancelled their bid.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I had this with one of my auctions, I was the seller and the default price was the bid that was the second sellers highest price. I offered it without really thinking of the bid amount, and the second guy went for it. It ended up being a fairly low auction anyway, but I see the point now. I only have ever had this once too

Theoretically, eBay should be making the second chance offer the initial bid of the second bidder. Yet another reason why I rather hate using ebay now.

The fact that the max bid becomes the default amount is dodgy practises on ebay's behalf anyway.

[griffin]

When sending out a second-chance offer, does an amount automatically go in (being the second person's max bid), or does it allow you to set the offer amount?
When I've challenged sellers about it, they've never said that they had no choice... they've always been defensive of the amount in the offer as if they had chosen it themselves.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

When sending out a second-chance offer, does an amount automatically go in (being the second person's max bid), or does it allow you to set the offer amount?
When I've challenged sellers about it, they've never said that they had no choice... they've always been defensive of the amount in the offer as if they had chosen it themselves.

I can't remember to be honest. If you can change the amount, it isn't made obvious by any means. When I did mine, I went to offer the second chance, and it came up with the invoice and the total amount was for their max bid. Nothing seemed to say, "want to change the amount?" anywhere.

[griffin]

If that's true, that's kinda stupid. It would mean that ebay makes the scam possible, and the sellers I confront about it are happy that it occurs to take advantage of it (which is probably why shill bidding occurs - to find out a person's Max-bid, so that they can claim that Ebay's second-chance system allows them to profit from it legitimately).
I woulda thought that it would ask the seller to enter in an amount up to a certain amount, or just default back to what the winning amount would have been... but I guess that would make it less inviting to the sellers (whom ebay makes money from).

[nexusnixx]

My experience as seller on eBay
If there are more than 1 bidder for the item, and when the auction closes, eBay provides an option to the seller to give the 2nd chance offer for the 2nd highest bidder at the price which the 2nd bidder's bid price is.

Hence if the winning bid is $10 and the 2nd highest bid is $9, eBay gives an option for seller to offer 2nd bidder the item at $9

Never given option by eBay to offer 2nd highest bidder at highest bid price

This is my experience

[AJ_Prime]

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, literally within the last 2 mins someone bid a higher price for an item and then I got the second chance offer at my highest bid. I didn't proceed with it, but instead emailed the seller asking if he was willing to sell the item for my original bid price rather than my highest. He said he couldn't do it.

I noticed that he had an identical item for sale, everything about the listing was identical. The latest bid price was lower than my bid for the original item so I left it but kept it in my watch list.

I waited until the clock got down to about 10 seconds then placed my bid at a few cents higher than the current bid (still lower than my original bid for the first item). I ended up winning the item for less than what I put on the first item.

One way to outsmart this kind of sham. I often wonder if some of the sellers set up separate accounts to bump up the bids for their own items. That way it doesn't matter if they don't sell it, who cares if your false account has a bad reputation as a buyer?

[Megatron]

...
One way to outsmart this kind of sham. I often wonder if some of the sellers set up separate accounts to bump up the bids for their own items. That way it doesn't matter if they don't sell it, who cares if your false account has a bad reputation as a buyer?

Apparently eBay has a secret way of looking out for such practices (by checking and comparing activity on suspicious accounts I believe) and putting a stop to them. I read it somewhere in their guidelines. I wonder how successful it's been...

[Slag]

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, literally within the last 2 mins someone bid a higher price for an item and then I got the second chance offer at my highest bid. I didn't proceed with it, but instead emailed the seller asking if he was willing to sell the item for my original bid price rather than my highest. He said he couldn't do it.

I noticed that he had an identical item for sale, everything about the listing was identical. The latest bid price was lower than my bid for the original item so I left it but kept it in my watch list.

I waited until the clock got down to about 10 seconds then placed my bid at a few cents higher than the current bid (still lower than my original bid for the first item). I ended up winning the item for less than what I put on the first item.

Nice one..

Planetforce by any chance?

[jazzcomp]

Second chance offer should be at your winning bid not at highest bid. Because the highest bidder backed out, his bid wasn't valid.