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There's nothing dishonest on the seller's part, if the winning bidder decides not to pay. If anyone is dishonest, it's the person who won the auction and failed to fulfill their obligation to pay for the item.
That's true, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
If the seller then decides to give a "second chance" option to the runner-up bidder, the seller is willing to accept a lower price than what the auction originally ended at.
Here we have a problem. Since the auction was tainted by false bidding, it did not really end at that high price. It ended nowhere. False bids invalidate the process.
If the runner-up bidder is unwilling to pay that price, they shouldn't have bid that amount in the first place.
I did not "bid that amount." I was willing to pay my secret maximum only if forced to do so by honest competition from other bidders. You're speaking as a seller who sees money coming in and wants the most he can get. The buyer wants to achieve the lowest price that (genuine) competing buyers will allow.
I empathize with honest sellers who are plagued by bogus bidders and I don't have a solution for this kind of asinine, profitless wrong-doing. But I don't want the price I pay to be inflated by phantoms, whether they are flakes or, in the worst case, shills. My personal solution has been to hit the Buy It Now button if I want something and the price is okay.
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Of course, sellers want to get as much as possible and buyers pay as little as possible. I've been on both sides of the fence many times, and understand the game completely. Matter of fact, coincidentally, I was the third runner-up on an auction that I'd bid on that ended last night, and received a second chance offer from the seller, who had multiple copies of the CD for sale. I was grateful for the opportunity to buy the CD for the price that I bid, even though it would have been lower if no one had outbid me. If I was not willing to pay that price, I would not have bid that amount, and if I'd decided it was somehow unfair that the second-chance offer was set at my high bid, I have the option not to purchase it. Second-chancers are not obligated to purchase the item, unlike high bidders.
On the other hand, just last week I auctioned off a CD on ebay and the high bidder (who was the only bidder, and who has a total positive feedback rating of 1) has neither responded to my emails nor sent payment for the item, even though I'd stated in the auction description that payment was expected within 3 days of the auction's end. If there was a runner-up bidder, I would gladly send them a second-chance offer to purchase the item, but since there wasn't any other bidders, and if the high bidder ends up flaking out (as it seems he/she will), I'll have to file a non-paying bidder complaint with ebay in order to get my final value fee refunded, and then relist the item with the hopes of selling it to an honest bidder the second time around. Worse yet, as a seller I can no longer leave negative feedback for non-paying bidders, yet this clown can leave me negative feedback without just cause, even though they failed to uphold their end of the deal.
I have a love/hate relationship with ebay. 
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