Up, up and eBay

A few weekends ago was a fun weekend.  It was my mate's stag weekend and we went camping/cycling/drinking in The Lakes.  To cut a long story short I ended up cycling on a fairly tricky mountain bike trail on a bike that wasn't mine.  Don't worry, I didn't steal a bike (or even hire one), I borrowed a friend's.  Now I'm not bi-cyclist technical, but this bike was a super-duper-go-fast-bounce-over-bumps-hard-wearing-all-round-good-bike bike.  Compared to my not-very-good-apollo-bought-on-sale-at-halfords-and-bit-twitchy-on-uneven-ground-bike bike it was a revelation.  A revelation that led me to want a new bike very quickly. On my return home, and recovery from the weekend of fun and games, I set about looking into achieving that...

I wasn't in any particular rush.  I spoke to my mate Rick about it.  He knows a lot about bikes, well, enough to blind a novice like me with big impressive words that make him sound like he knows a lot.  Anyway, I trust his judgement and am happy to take what he says as the way to go.  He said he had seen some very nice Boardman bikes in Halfords, that were a very good entry model to the sort of cycling we had done over the weekend.  That was good enough for me.  I looked at the said bikes in Halfords.  Hmmmmm, cheapest model £550.  A little (lot) more than I had in mind.  I wasn't sure Sharon would go for that.  Especially as I didn't think I would go for that.  I broached the subject of a new bike with Sharon and she wasn't unreceptive to it.  This was a start.  She suggested eBay, as her friend had bought a decent bike second hand.  I spoke to Rick who concurred with this.  He rhymed off 3 people who had successfully done likewise (one being my own cousin).  I decided to look on eBay, just to get an idea.  Low and behold, the EXACT bike Rick had recommend was on there, practically brand spanking new, for a decent price...... ending that day.  I had a dilemma.  Should I go for it and (quite rightly) incur the wrath of Sharon for spending a lot of money, without a discussion with her?  The answer was, of course, no.  But then again......?  No! I sent her various communications asking what she thought.  I wasn't expecting a quick answer as she struggles replying quickly because of the nature of her work, but I lived in hope.  As it turned out she replied very quickly indeed, giving me the all clear.  We were away. 

We are finally up to the point of this blog.  EBay and people's abuse thereof.  There was a "Buy It Now" price of £425 and the current bid was £383, reserve not met.  I bid £400 and then waited to see what happened as to whether I would pay the "Buy It Now" price.  My £400 hit the reserve and the "Buy It Now" disappeared.  I didn't know this happened.  I'm not an experienced eBayer. (What a strange world we live in now.  A world with strange verbs and nouns.  eBaying (v) To participate in a transaction on eBay.  eBayer (n) One who eBays.  The same can be done with Facebooking, texting, etc.  And don't even get me started on Twitter and Tweeting etc. Or the fact that some words have a lowercase first letter, but upper case second letter eBay, iPhone...)  So anyway, I was a bit angry with myself for not researching a bit better.  I would have paid the £425, but not more, if I'd really thought about it.  Now I was in a bidding war.  Stress.  I wanted this bike, but not enough to pay more and I'd now maybe let it slip from my grasp.  As I didn't know if I would be around to watch when the auction ended I decided to up my max bid to £415.  I was currently winning with my £400 bid, but I didn't know if that would last.  Then I thought better of it and decided to go for a max bid of £425.  That was the "Buy It Now" price I would have been willing to pay, so why not have that as my top bid.  Bidding done I went about my day and on getting home from work checked how things were going.  I was up to my £415 bid.  Soon after I was up to my £425 bid.  With 2 hours to go.  That was it, I was probably going to lose.  True blue.  About an hour before it finished it leaped up to £435 with 26 bids.  That was it.  I was quite angry with myself for letting it pass me by.  I put it down to experience and started looking for another bike on ebay. 

Then I got an email.

Bid retraction.  I was, once again, winning.  With my original bid of £400.  HORRAYY!!!  I said as much on Facebook.  Someone pointed out that bid retractions can mean that the seller is getting someone to bid and push the price up and they realise they have gone too far.  So I started to do a little digging.  It had dropped to my £400 bid and there were now only 12 bids.  14 bids by someone and then they lose interest completely and retract.  That seems strange.  Fortunately I had already looked at the bid list and worked out the eBay replacement name that was missing from the bid list.  As I was watching it jumped up to my £415 bid.  Then straight away to my £425 bid.  2 new bids.  What?! From the person who had retracted their 14 bids. But they hadn't  bid enough of a bid to win, just enough to get me back up to my maximum bid.  They were obviously testing my limit and then pushing me back up to it.  I looked at the bidding history for that bidder and they had recently bid on 5 other items by that one seller, in the last hour of the auction.  And on any expensive (£50+) items that seller had sold, that bidder had always bid a number of times...... but had never won.  Coincidence?  I think not.

The auction ended and I won.  I wanted the bike and it was at the price I was happy to pay, otherwise I wouldn't have bidded it, so I paid it.  It left me feeling a little "played" though.  It grated at me.  I wasn't feeling pure joy over my new bike, because it represented that I'd been had.  I don't like to lose, but I did want the bike.  It wasn't about the money.  I didn't really care about the £25, but I didn't want them to get away with it.  Especially not as they seem to do it a lot and so would continue to do it to other people.  I wasn't gong to make life difficult for myself though, just to get some money back.  It may drag things on with me getting the bike, or worse.  So I decided to wait until I had got my bike, then I would give them negative feedback detailing what I had witnessed and, more importantly, send a report to ebay.

About 9 days after I paid for my bike it FINALLY arrived.  I assembled it and all seemed well.  I say well, the front brake seemed a bit clicky, but I eventually fixed that by tightening a bolt  And the brakes seem a bit lax.  They need adjusting, or bleeding, or more oil, or something.  That's this weekend's job.  And he didn't send me the code for the lock, but a quick email and rearranging the numbers he gave me into the correct order (moron) solved that one.

So the time had come to report him.  And report him I did.   Both to eBay and via negative feedback.  I had done extensive research and posted examples of his "shill bidding", as I now know it's called.  That's where we're up to.  I would say, "Watch this space...", but eBay sent me an email saying that I won't be notified of any action taken to any users due to the fact "it's important that eBay maintains member privacy".  Ah well, I can always look in on the user and see if he still exists.

EDIT: According to the reply to my negative feedback to the seller, eBay ruled in his favour.  Part of me thinks he would say that, but even if they did, ah well, I tried.