Hi.

Well, I'm bidding on a faulty camcorder on ebay, and winning the auction. It was sitting at £21 for a couple of days, I bid higher and it's now going to me for £31. Then someone who has never bid for anything comes along and bids rather higher, 10 minutes before the end of the auction. Throwing caution to the winds, I increase my bid by £5, and get it back. Then he counterbids, raising the stakes to a level I don't like, and wins the auction. Nothing too unusual. I chalk it up the odd craving people seem to have for overpriced broken camcorders, and move on to the next auction ending in a couple of hours.

10 minutes after the end of the auction, the seller contacts me and says that due to a hoax bidder, I'm the auction winner. I check the values, and think "great, take these bids off and we're back to the £31". He also relists the item for 24 hours with a buy-it-now proce of about £67, which causes ebay to automatically re-offer it to me.

I contact him and ask how much he is thinking I should pay (being careful, of course), and he replies that I can have it for £65. Quick as a flash, I riposte, pointing out that the hoax bidder's two bids, if removed, leave my winning high bid as £31, not the maximum bid I put in. He reiterates that he wants £65 + P&P.

At this point I get a little paranoid, and do some checking. The "hoax" bidder joined ebay 2 days ago, and had also bid before on the same item to the value of £35 (just over the longstanding £21 bid), but the seller apparently rejected his bid at about mid-day today on the basis of zero/low feedback. Then I bid, and lo and behold he's back. Then he's apparently a hoax bidder, a mere 10 minutes after the end of the auction. Did he call to gloat, or something?

To add to all this, his ebay ID is xxx8simon, while the email address of the seller is simon8xx at aol.com (munged email). Feels odd, but I suppose it could be a coincidence Also, although this is probably just proof of an AOL user, the seller can't seem to work out where the caps lock on his keyboard is.

Realising that there may be something fishy going on, I email him back and offer him £50 including postage, pointing out that this is comfortably above the amount I should really pay assuming I actually won free of interference, but willing to be nice. I also point out the odd coincidences mention above, apologising if I was drawing the wrong conclusions. There is a long delay, and finally he responds thanking me for my interest and saying that the parts cost of the thing is more than the price he's currently asking. Doesn't comment on the near-accusation of shill-bidding at all.

So. Am I reading too much into it, or is this my first encounter with the everpresent danger of ebay scams? Note that to add to my annoyance, when the his offer first came in I cancelled the other unit I was bidding on (since I didn't want two), and looking back would have won it for less than this one. Damn.

pca