Weird goings-on with sold item

[MusicianTom]

I'm new to eBay selling, and have been listing a few bits and bobs from lockdown decluttering.

The auction had ended on one item, it had sold for about £4, there were 5 bids listed.

I then had a message from the person who was the third highest bidder saying they'd had an automatic notification from eBay to pay for the item, but they hadn't won. I apologised and said I would ask eBay to look into it. I couldn't find any way to email them so left it as I was busy that day.

4 days after the auction finished the person listed as the winning bidder hadn't paid, so I sent them a reminder. And they replied and said they hadn't bid on it and didn't want it .

I contacted eBay through live chat and they said the winning bidder must be lying, but I couldn't be bothered to open a case to force them to pay (plus they would probably leave negative feedback) so I just cancelled the whole auction.

But the more I think about it, it seems really weird. Can eBay be hacked and fake bids made? And had someone sent the non-winning bidder a fake request for payment? I'm baffled.

Sounds like an almighty headache for something for £4. Hopefully there is a simple explanation.

There are eBay “sniper” websites where you could set them to automatically bid on eBay on your behalf at the last second, so a buyer can essentially steal the auction (by a penny!) Maybe the highest bidder did that? Hence why they didn’t remember, as it was a bot rather than them.

Doesn’t explain why anyone else was sent a reminder to pay though. Maybe the other buyer was mistaken