Last week I spotted a new listing for "Michael Jackson Scrapbook" for $199.00 on eBay. I've been outbid in previous auctions, so I waited until the last few minutes on Saturday to place my bid. With 3 minutes left in the auction (and ZERO bids), I saw 1 new bid pop up for $199.00. I figured that person was watching the listing like I was. So I bid $220.00 with 10 seconds left.

Within literally 3 seconds, Ebay auto-bid $200.00, $210.00, $211.00, and finally, $220.01 for the other buyer and I lost the auction. To my surprise -- just 4 hours later -- the same book was re-listed by the same seller for $299.00! Now, I know Fed Ex is fast but they are not that fast to ship the item to the buyer, and return it to the seller so she can re-list it in 4 hours.

Clearly, the greedy seller used a different user name to bid on her own item, and she accidentally outbid me -- a practice known as Shill bidding, which is against eBay policy.

I have no plans to bid on this item again, as I know she is just waiting to drive the bidding price up to my max bid (which is why I usually wait until the last few minutes to bid on anything).

The first link is the original auction that I lost on Saturday. The 2nd link is the same item re-listed by the same seller on Saturday.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-THE-MICHAEL-JACKSON-SCRAPBOOK-SEALED-/...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-THE-MICHAEL-JACKSON-SCRAPBOOK-SEALED-I...