Ebay "You have a second chance"

dohouch

Twice recently after having been outbid on Ebay I got these "2nd chance emails" directly from Ebay, offering me the object at the price I'd originally bid. Didn't take up offer. These offers came within a day of the auction ending.

But I recently came across a warning about some scam connected with these 2nd chance offers.

Anybody know what the scam is. Could it just be sellers entering "auto-bids" to keep the price rising and then later offering it to the highest "genuine bidder".

thanks

rubadub

dohouch wrote: »

Anybody know what the scam is. Could it just be sellers entering "auto-bids" to keep the price rising and then later offering it to the highest "genuine bidder".

This is called shilling, where people bid on their own item to create bidding wars and drive the price up. It also can force your max bid to be revealed and charged.

e.g. imagine 1 person bid €50 on an item, and starting bid was €25, then if nobody bids on it they get it for €25 (not €50). Along comes you and bids €100 max, now you are the highest bidder at say €55 (as ebay is proxy bidding so your max is not realised yet). Now the seller can log in with his mates account and keep bidding up and up, this forces your bid price to go up and up, until €100, if he bids €105 he is the highest bidder and wins, if he cancels it then you are the next highest bidder, but at €100 and not the €55 you would have got it for if he had not shilled. (I am not 100% certain if that is what happens, it might go back to €55 so somebody might verify if it is correct or not)



Other ebay scams could be people creating addresses that look like legit ebay ones and sending fake ebay payment requests, similar to phishing scams. So you could possibly get a fake second chance offer this way (not sure if it happens.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/05/ebay_scam_ruse/

If you log into your ebay account it should have notices if you got a legit second chance offer.

booboo88

uh oh, cuz i just got an email about what i had already "committed to buying" but its not in my purchase history, was i scammed? its only 14 quid but better in my pocket than theirs:mad:

rubadub

On a recent ebay purchase it says

Received a Second Chance Offer email? Double check that it's genuine: Second Chance Offer emails come directly from eBay and are shown in your My Messages.

gives this link
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/second-chance.html

but if you log in it should be in "my messages"

i just got an email about what i had already "committed to buying"

Your notification emails from ebay probably should have come from the address member@ebay.com or SecondChanceOffer@ebay.com , where did yours come from?

upinthesky

if they have there biding on private then this could be the case it is unusual for someone to offer second chance so quickly i would normally wait a week

dohouch

rubadub wrote: »

where did yours come from?

Sorry can't help you there as it is a while back, maybe 6 weeks or more. The 2nd chance offer came I would say the day after the the listing ended. It was the short time after the offer ended that made me a bit weary.

And then a few weeks later seeing the story about the "2nd chance scam" that made me post here.