How do I stop fake bidders from ruining my auction?

Kia Ora Branton,

Sorry to read this is happening to you and your frustration is shared,

Unfortunately it's a sign of the times we are in and TM is not in isolation of these cases but one of the many online Companies this is happening to.

Applying for your Success Fees refund alerts TM to incidences allowing them to investigate accounts accordingly and take the necessary steps to help prevent re-occurrences by these Members. - Patience is the Key to Successful Trades.

- Cheers.

The fake bidders that annoy me are the ones that bid an auction up, just to find out where someone else's auto-bid is, and then they ask for their top bid to be removed once they hit the lead. That one really grinds my gears.

Simon, I recently used Community watch to report Bidders like this! - I don't know the outcome but I sure hope there was one! - Cheers.

Hi there S - How would you word a CW for this? Also what category did you put it under?

This is something that needs to stop. Its a dirty trick, it puts Sellers to trouble, because we have to physically remove the bid, and then what do we do for the under bidder? Do we remove their bids as well? What if they are not montioring the auction, and dont see that their Autobid has removed? That's not fair. Then as a seller you have an upset under-bidder to placate if they do end up winning the auction because they have been "run-up" unfairly, it makes the seller look like they have organized a shill bidder.

Another fake bidder pushing the price up today.

Didn't even notice until after the winner had paid for and collected the item.

Cheers Simon,

I 100% Agree - I copied & saved what I wrote in so have just edited a little represented by the ..... as below.

Category: Just this Listing

Worded: I am reporting All the Members who have placed bids on this auction and then requested their bid be removed! - There has to be some penalty to Bidders upping a ...... However this does Not excuse those Fake Bidders behaviour 1 bit! ...... Consequences for these False Bidders is a Must! - This alone is degrading & de-valuing the TM Platform - Name - And Trust! - Shocking Behaviour to be allowed! - Please take this onboard seriously - Thank you!

That's Awesome! - I didn't have all those categories when reporting my CW, beyond the 'Just this listing' I had to select odd ones to get to the wording so it's great to see the provision for this type of reporting has been acknowledged and implemented - Cheers 😊

I still have not removed the bid yet. I will do it today though, I just wanted T-Me Customer service to see what has happened before I did anything.

In response to the Remove my bid question, I am thinking of responding something like this "I am not that happy about this, all you have done is reveal the Auto-bid of ******, if ***** sees this and wants their bid removed as well, so they can reset their Auto-bid this fine, just let me know, I got you buddy" .

I was a little surprised to find that their was a provision for this - although I assume its intended for reporting Shill bidders?

Oh and apologies to Branton  I seem to have hijacked your thread...

I think we both have hijacked Branton's Post Simon though I prefer to read as we are Helping Members to know there is a provision to report this through - therefore they may not get as wound as I did at the time - although with the report I had there were multi Bidders withdrawing which saw a significant winning bid fall below half way of where it was at and it was a Charity auction.

I think your response to the question on your auction is a very clear message in letting the person know you are not happy and why - Also a clear and kind msg to your auto-bid Member - Cheers Simon.

There are people who up-bid purely to see where the Reserve price is if they themselves have a similar item to sell and are looking for the Market worth value to set their own auction price by. - When placing bids one used to get a message appear notifying you of the Top bid placed by an auto-bid from an opposing Member when you were within a bid away from that target, there has been a change to this, these notifications no longer appear - perhaps catching a few out who may be expecting this.

Simon, your suggestion of TM contacting these Members to 'warn them off such behavior in the future' could be a helpful deterrent, as perhaps the ability to report this, I think we may have to keep eyes on the TM Policies & T&C's.

Happy Trading Everyone!