Ebay Scam Question

I am going to generalize this because something is confusing and the deal is not final.

I bid on an item last week won the auction. The seller has an excellent feedback rating with a very large number of sales.

The seller put in the ad, Any one with a low feedback (I will not mention the actual number) will have thier bid canceled. My positive feedback surpassed his requirements. According to the bid history a few of the first bidders had thier bids canceled due to not meeting his reqiurements of a certain number of feedbacks.

There were two qualified bidders at the end of the auction, me and someone else. It looks like the first bidders ran up the price then got canceled.

My question is if the earlier bids were null and void did they play a roll in an inflated price? I had my max bid and won.

I payed for the item last week and for some reason paypal has a hold on the payment. I do not want to contact the seller and piss him off and wait forever for my item or have ebay get involved and prolong it even longer. The seller has not collected the money and the item has not been shipped. Has anyone had paypal withhold payment and if so why?

No those bids did not affect the price at all once a bid is removed weather by the seller or buyer that bid is no longer in the average. Everything would start from "0" If anything it would hurt him because he could use other bidders to inflate the price which is actually quite common.

somethings rotten in denmark.......when you mention ebay and paypal you are talking the same entity....apparently
the cash or payment is being held for a reason...could be a shill bidder deal....a buddy of my brother-in-law got nabbed for shill bidding.....ebay employs an army of people
looking for wrongdoing....i would contact paypal and ask whats up....

+1

Sounds like you are caught up in a shill bidding investigation. I had this happen one time on a boat. Action ended at 11:00pm, and someone aggressively outbid me. Then the seller sent me an email 5 min. after the auction ended to tell me that the other buyer backed out, but he would let me have the boat for my last bid. I told him to take a long walk off a short pier!

example:

i see a sparkplug i wanna bid on....i see my bid of 2$ is rolling along ...suddenly i see i'm outbid....

i click on the auctions...number of bids...for this plug it shows 2 bids.....i click on the competitors privacy call sign on the bidders shown...it shows that he has bid on 5 items with "this" seller and it is 80% of his actual bid records for the latest period shown....

i have always thought this must be a phantom bidder...whats to stop me from opening a side account to jack my sales items bids up and registering under my dogs name with another computer and address????

i stop bidding when i see a situation like this...

i have had sellers tell me that i need to cancell my pay-pal and resend payment because pay-pal is tellijng them they can't access funds i sent...or they put a wrong # or letter in their recieve funds slot..
i have had to do this repeatedly for a few sales...i always get trust issues when this happens and the pay-pal recnet payments and credits on "my" paypal can get confusing when the same payment gets cancelled and resent a few times....

if the buyer has good feedback i "never' hesitate to contact and explain why i'm confused..almost always they share the same concerns...and they are having a problem too on the same auction....

probably just a glitch...

i have only had one dishonest transaction on e-bay and really the seller may have been on the legit...i camcelled and never got my item....good luck

I would contact the seller and see if they knew what was up. I buy lots of stuff on ebay and never have a problem. Read the previous comments to this seller and see if that gives any clues...Russ

Paypal invokes their own 'mystery' rules on some transactions. We had them freeze a payment from a customer when the customer was a repeat customer and had never contacted paypal about the transaction. Paypal claimed it was a suspicious transaction and they ended up cancelling our payment even though we had shipped product. Fortunately the customer repaid with a credit card.

I called Paypal 5 or 6 times and could never get a straight answer on why they froze the money and why they cancelled the transaction.

Personally, I would rather not deal with Paypal. They are not governed by the FED and can do as they please on things as they are not a bank. Worse, because they are not a bank, all their banking and credit card transactions are farmed out to banks to process for them - this just means an additional set of fingers in the pie, and more that can go wrong. Their buyer protection is worthless.

I had a similar problem with PayPal. A customer sent an Echeck and after 7 days PayPal cleared it. I sent the item to Germany item was $125 and shipping was another $35 because of size and wt. Three weeks later PayPal withdrew that money from my account because they said the German bank canceled the transaction. They never explained anything so I was and am out of $160. So now when I deal with any transaction from Germany I hold the Item for an entire month before I ship it.

I have been dealing with Ebay for a long time. Ebay owns a 1/4 of Craigslist and Ebay owns Paypal from what I understand. I felt like Ebay was forcing me into Paypal so all I did was buy and pay thru seller's account with my credit card. The other day I got a message that I exceeded my Paypal limit of buying even though I didn't have Paypal. Well I joined, kind of like it as it is secure and a lot of other places are accepting it. I always check feedback and contact the buyer or seller as I need to. Never click on a link especially thru your email. You all probably know, but if it is from Ebay then it will be in your Ebay messages. I used to buy some $20 Gold eagles and one time I bought an old silver trade dollar just when the auction was ending. I didn't pay attention to the shipping($75) because the auction was ending real quick on the .99 cent auction. Well I won, so I sent an airmail money order which cost about $2.00 for the money order and $2.00 for the air mail. I told them here is payment and for them to keep the coin. I told Ebay and the said this was OK as long as it was OK with the seller. I said I don't care if it was OK with seller as I paid for what I bid on. I didn't bid on shipping and you are always allowed to actually pick up your item face to face if you want to. Of course I wasn't going to Hong Kong. You can usually spot the scammmers by their wording or spelling and if it smells like a rat, then it probably is a rat. Don't let your emotions get into the heat of the bidding as you will pay too much (personal experience - lol).

I must say that in over 5 years of dealing with Ebay & Paypal I have had few problems with either. On a couple of occasions I have had to contact them and found them helpful with any problem issues being resolved quickly. The usual problem is sellers either not shipping items or very slow to ship.
I buy a lot from the USA but avoid Canada as the shipping is too slow from there to the UK. Taiwan is quick too.
I avoid buying items from Germany as not only are the items very expensive but many do not take Paypal and it costs me 25 dollars to send an international money transfer. Paypal is great for me buying from the USA.
I suppose that my main grumble with Ebay is the use of Auction Sniper and other like programmes that bid in the last few seconds. I admit that I do use it sometimes to buy from the US due to the time difference and I am sure not going to wait up until 4am to make final bids.
Tommotbird

My own experience similar to jacking the price at the end is this....

Was bidding on a brand new ZX636 front OEM fender... I already knew the OEM price so wasn't going to go that route...

Anyhoot, within an hour of the time end, someone out bid me at $20 over OEM price... No being a smart asshole I am.... :laugh: Said, all yours.....

Well I get an e-mail from the seller the next hour informing me the buyer canceled on the deal...

Basically it was this, he had a friend jack up the price on their quote to see if I'd bite. I informed the seller this, I was the winning bid at $40 before I was out bid by $40...

If you want to sell it to me for $40 and for the fact of the game play going on here... $40 is the price and YOU NOW PAY shipping....

Look at my avatar.... $40 for a OEM brand new in the OEM wrapping ZX636 front fender....

It's just the way the game plays folks, 90% all do it... You have to know when to fold the cards or play there bluff....

OMR

I love to snipe, the best I have done is win with 2 seconds on the clock. I know how much time it takes to bid and then to confirm. I missed some powdercoated valve covers because my computer was running slow. I emailed the seller and asked him to do another auction of the same. I took off the whole day from work just so I could win this auction and I did. I sold a $10,000 Nova on there and I have bought a $9000 bike on there also. The only problem I had was buying some headlight ears for an old Honda 750K model and they were rusted pieces of junk. No problem if the seller didn't offer a return policy, but he did. One night I called and talked with him and we got it on over the phone. I told him I researched his location and I would personally see him face to face in Colorado when I went to visit my sister (I am in Texas). Short story I got my money back. I even bought one bike and researched the seller. I know what his house looked like, what building permits he applied for, how many kids he had, etc.. Internet can be a useful tool(lol). I also remind sellers that I want my feedback or I usually don't buy from them anymore. Give me my feedback(good or bad) as long as I deserve it. I have something like 125 feedback all positive, but 1, as I gave her negative feedback first for bidding and not paying.