Bid By a Bot?

hobbycrafter · 2014-05-24T08:50:42.000Z

So here's the story. I put a set up for auction, something with low interest, so in the end I only got two bidders. It only ended today, and when I checked the winning bidder I got very, very suspicious of him/her/it being a bot. The suspected bot has a completely empty account, joined ebay the same day the first bidder placed his/her bid on my item, hails from the Russian Federation, and has a username that consists of five numbers, a dash, seven consonant letters in an incomprehensible order, and a number. (Fake Example: 11233-bcdfghj4) Has anyone encountered bots before on eBay, or bots that have specifically done this (You have a bid, bot outbids by a tiny amount, bot never pays)? What are you supposed to do about it? I'm pressed for money, so I need to sell this ASAP and am very likely going to do this through Second Chance to the first bidder, but I've listed a "Payment due in 4 days" in my description. Anyone have thoughts on what to do? What I WANT to do is drop the current bidder immediately and give it to the first one, but my description "policy" states 4 days for payment. Can I also justify this by saying I had put US only shipping and the only location info he has is the "Russian Federation"? How can he even bid in the first place? Most importantly, what does eBay's policy suggest, and what are the intricacies in Second Chance? Do I have the (protected) right to chose who gets the bid, or does the buyer have the protected right to purchase the item? The risk in this is that the winning bidder is NOT a bot, but I wanted to get your opinions and expertise on it. I have messaged the first bidder to let them know the situation and that they will likely be getting the Second Chance. I have done nothing else yet, but I want to do something by tomorrow midday. Edit: For the record and details, the "bot" bid 11 hours after the first bidder. He's had no page views until I checked on him today. The field that would normally show a ZIP code in the list of bidders only shows "Russian Federation". The bid increment the "bot" raised was $0.91 to get the final bid to end in an even $x.99.