eBay other bidders cancelling minutes from end

[Angryfrommanchester1]

I won something last night and genuinely wondered what has happened. Item listed for £15, I bid at £15 and was in front for a while. After a day a few others came in with a higher bids for it went upto £25. I bid £26 and was again winning, others came in again quickly after and bid upto £33. So I left it, I didn’t want to pay that.
After the item ended I got a notification I’d won at £26. I was a bit baffled but after checking the bid history just minutes before the item ended 2 other bidders who had been in front of me cancelled their bids. Now I didn’t think you could do that... can someone else explain to me what’s happened (as does it should dodgy?)

Could be the seller had someone bid the item up, I'm sure seller can cancel the bid under the guise of the buyer wanting to cancel

Shill bidding I believe it's called but it's usually done on items with higher costs than that.

People get friends to bid on stuff and cancel it basically...to drive the price up.

It could be shill bidding - bogus bidders forcing the price up.

Seller trying to bump the price up probably. It worked didn't it?

Sound like shill bidding. Otherise known as the sellers friends placing fake bids to drive the price up. You can report to Ebay, but it's unlikely they will do anything about it.

Ah I suspected something was amiss.... just remembered I did the ‘make an offer’ which were all declined as well, at £14, £14.50 and £17.50 ie over I went if the start price which I thought was odd.

I’m ok with paying £26, but felt it was a bit odd.
So it is still the case that you can’t just cancel your own bids minutes / seconds from the end?

I've sold a few things and had the winner message me to say they've changed their mind, then the second highest bidder not reply to say they want it, so I've sold to the third highest. This has happened twice and I've sold maybe ten things ever.

@CatOfTheLand

I've sold a few things and had the winner message me to say they've changed their mind, then the second highest bidder not reply to say they want it, so I've sold to the third highest. This has happened twice and I've sold maybe ten things ever.

Yes that’s happened to me, I think it was called second chance offer when that happened. This wasn’t the case with this, it happened right at the end, I was notified as ‘winner’.

Another possibility is that they were genuine bidders who were bidding on other similar items and cancelled those bids when they won a different one.