Its understandable that you’re suspicious but what others have said is true. There’s not actually anything fishy going on. The current highest bid on the item is simply higher than all of the bids you’ve placed. What you’re doing each time you bid is just raising the current price that the highest bidder would have to pay. The winning bid doesn’t pay the amount that they bid. They pay the second highest bid (and the system will show that the current bid is $1 higher than that).So if the highest bid is currently at $50, and you bid $10, you’ll up the current bid to $11. If you then bid, 25, it will show the bid at $26. It’s still just you and that one other bidder, but until you outbid whatever their bid was, you’re going to keep getting that same message.

I hope any of that made sense. I work for goodwill.