Question - Disappearing bids on Ebay?

[pixel42]

I apologize for posting twice in one day, but I'd love to get some clarification on what just transpired in an auction I was bidding on, on Ebay.

There was a domain listed for 6 days - opening bid was $0.77, and by yesterday (1 day before the end) there were 2 bids. By this afternoon, there were 6 bids, for a total price of $7 and some change.

As usual, I waited until the very last minute to bid, and my opening bid was in the low $30 range. What was strange, though, was that right before I clicked the "place bid" button, previous bids started disappearing, so that the price went back to $0.77.

I was outbid and upped my bid a few times, and the end result was that my bid of $58 was beat by $1 (probably a proxy bid from someone else). I can deal with losing - it happens - but I'd like to know why the other bids disappeared. I've never seen that happen before, where the price went back down to the original price and then shot way up.

Either there was a really determined bidder on the other end, or there's something shady going on that I don't know about. Before I point fingers, I'd like to know if there have been revisions in Ebay's bidding policy or tactics that I don't know about. I don't want to jump to conclusions.

It could just be something I'm overlooking - it's happened before. But I'm pissed. I immediately called the seller in Canada to try to get them on the phone - but they didn't pick up.

I hope whoever won the name puts it to good use, because it's an industry I happen to have a lot of qualified contacts in. I could have easily resold the name.

If you've seen this happen before or have any explanation for the disappearing bids, I'd love to hear it.

[INFORG]

Sounds like a bidder retracted his bid - it happens from time to time. When it does, they reverse it back to wherever it was before they bid.

[pixel42]

Maybe when somebody bids higher, their lower bids are deleted entirely. I noticed in the final bid list that only 2 of my bids were listed. The other bidders were under "private listing" so I couldn't see them at all.

I actually have my doubts about the ownership of this name. The WhoIS is privacy protected at Moniker, when all of the other domains I've checked from this particular seller are public and at Tucows. The domain itself is also active, and being used as a lead gen site for a different company - but none of their sites are hosted at Moniker. I'm not sure if the seller could have listed the site on Ebay on behalf of someone else, but I can't see the motivation for that, unless it's to generate interest in the name.

I am looking forward to checking the WhoIS in the next few weeks to see what it says.

[floname]

Hey Melly,

keep us up on this, especially for the fact that the whois records stink a bit..

This sounds like possibly a shill team to maybe test the waters and see what kind of interest, if any, the name would generate. If you have access to a whois history tool, it may expose some of the recent activity and if there was ever an actual change in privacy settings and/or ownership following the auction.

[pixel42]

Hey Melly,

keep us up on this, especially for the fact that the whois records stink a bit..

This sounds like possibly a shill team to maybe test the waters and see what kind of interest, if any, the name would generate. If you have access to a whois history tool, it may expose some of the recent activity and if there was ever an actual change in privacy settings and/or ownership following the auction.

Hi, I'm not Melly. I believe Melly is a famous female domainer. I'm flattered for the mix-up.

Yes, the auction starter is actually listed as the owner of the .NET version of this name, (and listed publicly in the WhoIS). I'm not convinced they own the .COM, but that's what was being auctioned off on Ebay. We'll see. Most of their auctioned sites are parked at GoDaddy and this was a fully developed site, so maybe they forgot which one they owned, or were testing the waters, like you said. I'm over it now...it was just frustrating at the time.

[floname]

Sorry Nadia

I did get you mixed up, lol

To be honest, that's happened to me before, listing the wrong name or later finding out that I actually owned a typo variation of what I thought I owned

It happens to the best of us.

[cmason]

I think I was bidding the exact same domain - BuyUsed[keyword]? After hundreds of normal auctions at eBay I was surprised as well, HOWEVER, I received an email from eBay saying that the seller had cancelled a previous bidders bid and that I was then the high bidder at $0.77. Then, I received a notice that MY bid had been cancelled by the seller as well.

If you go to the auction item page you should see something that says "Explanation: item not as described" beside all of the previous bids. As far as I know the listing didn't change afterwards, so I don't know exactly what happened to make the seller do this to all of the original bidders.