ebay - second chance

I recently was one of the low bidders on an ebay item. The item didn't reach the reserve. I received a notice about a second chance to bid. Is this an up and up ebay thing or is it a scam?

There is such a thing...

By the way...loved the pics of your perkins in GEM...hope to see it at Portland - Bill In Indiana

Barring the unseen, the Perkins will be at Portland through Saturaday afternoon.

I've been getting alot of those second chance emails and they have been all scams.

Tom Winland Ohio

Second chance is usually mailed to the highest bidder, to see if he will meet the reserve. If you think you are getting an eBay scam, forward it to: Spoof@eBay.com . They will tell you if it is genuine. Anfrew

"Second Chance" is a legitimate ePay product that allows sellers to offer multiple units of an item to bidders other than the high bidder, and perhaps bidders when the item doesn't meet reserve. Second chance is a money maker for ePay, and offers all ePay "protection", if done thru the ePay system. As with all ePay products & services it took scammers about 10 minutes to come up with counterfit methods.

I do a lot of bidding on e-Bay in another field, big dollar stuff. I often get bogus offers of being second bid. I alwayse get the real sellers e mail address before bidding so I can check out for myself if the offer is real. It usually looks authentic but they want you to contact some funky address . Its usually a scam the seller knows nothing about, the item is sold and gone.

A pal of mine was high bidder of an item- reserve not met. His bid tallied at about $1650.00 (reserve not met), although his actual bid was somewhat higher.

When he received a second chance offer for the same amount that his bid had registered on the auction that had closed, he was skeptical so he had eBay review the offer. They had an answer for him by the next morning that the offer was legitimate, so he bought the item. It showed up to him as a "buy it now" offer, as it does if you search his auction history, although in the auction history, you wouldn't know it was a second chance offer if someone hadn't told you.

He told me that there was an info page on eBay concerning all the ins-and-outs of this.

I wouldn't hesitate to quiz eBay about the legitimacy of a specific second chance offer because, if it is like the one my pal got, the offer was good for , I think, 3 days.

I believe the 2nd chance bid goes to the highest bidder? BobRR

Ebay allows a vendor to offer a 'second chance' one-day offer for items which he/she either has more than one of, or the original deal did not go through for some reason.

The offer has to go to the next lowest bidder(s) and various rules apply as to listing fees (none usually) and commission (standard ebay selling commission is charged)

It is a regular feature on ebay and is not a scam. It is possible to use the feature as a means of avoiding selling 'Dutch' if you have multiple items.

It is of course quite possible to bend the rules and offer non-existent items for sale, but as has already been mentioned here, vetting the sller's feedback etc is a good way to ovoid the more obvious scames.

Peter

i sell off topic items.. somtimes i might have ten of these,,, i will sell one on ebay....after the auction is over... i do offer another one to the next under bidder,( this is what you call a second chance offer) i will pay the fees for the second chance offer,,, no it is not a scam, some times these items go high, so i dont mind offering another one to the next under bidder..enginenut