I recently entered a charity auction for a memorabilia item. I submitted my price on paper (lady on desk took it from me to put in the envelope with the others later as she wouldn’t let me put it in the envelope myself).
I received an email a week later telling me that my price was matched by someone else and to submit a second price including pence to make sure it didn’t happen again by midnight via email that night. I increased my price by 50% and added an extra pound and 99pence with two minutes to spare.
I then received a reply a day later saying my price had again been matched by this other person which I find astonishing.
I was told I had two options. To divide the item (it was a signed pair of items) and have one each and pay half if the other agreed or the charity will put both names in a bowl and pick a winner and record a video for me to show no foul play.
What do I do? I would prefer not to split the item up which I don’t believe will be an option anyway. It seems strange that my precise second price was matched the second time…
Comments
This sounds very scammy to me. I would think that since you made the original bid, then someone else bid the exact amount you did, you should have won the item.
They could be doing this to get as much money as possible, and there is no second bidder, so I wouldn’t bid on it anymore.
Tell them you pass. They’ll be right back to you with the offer, telling you that they never had a second bidder. Then tell them your first bid stands.
Something is not right with this. There’s no way someone is matching the bid twice. It sounds like someone is trying to drive the price up. You should tell them you’re withdrawing your bid. I think you’ll see them change their mind
The practice is known as shill bidding. It quite common for auctions like this when it isn’t live in person or if it online auction etc where they’ll bid on it knowing you want it to extract every last dollar out of you.
Even in live in person auction can be a plant there driving up the price and pushing it up close to reserve to get the other buyers more interested or just driving up the price.