<a name="start_16447.175602">I'd bet that the seller was the 'winning' bidder. That happens when a seller thinks that the bids he or she is getting for their item is too low. They might have two eBay accounts and bid against themselves in hopes that other people who are interested in that item will loose all sense and try to out bid the 'high bidder'. It's common. I can't believe that the sellers would be THAT STUPID, but what can you do?
Justin</a>
It's called 'shrill bidding' and is illegal on ebay. You can get a seller's account pulled if you can prove it. Report it and ebay will look into it. What could have happened is 'snipe bidding', which is legal and everything happens in the last minute automatically by proxy. When ebay started making the bids anonymous, it became easier to shrill bid. But, you can see a history of the anonymous bidder; how many items they bought recently, how many times they bid and if they defaulted out of a bid.
Kevin