I’ve been eBaying a few odd items lately, and last night some moron kid from Florida ruined half of the last minute auctions by jumping in and placing bunk bids. It was too late to block him or remove him from the bid list. As you can imagine, I was quite irate. I fired off an email to my personal eBay expert, Chuck. He responded:

There’s not much you can do unless he doesn’t pay. If he doesn’t pay within seven days, you can report him to eBay and it may suspend his account. Here’s a link with details.

If it’s clear he’s not ever going to pay, eBay will let you offer the item to the second highest bidder. This is called a “Second Chance Offer.” You can read more about it here.

He didn’t really snipe because his bids were submitted about ten minutes before the end of the auction. Snipe bids are usually submitted in the final seconds of an auction.