Why does ebay allow buyer to retract bids?

shaggy

eg. Buyer makes a really high bid on an auction with a reserve price. The bid automatically climbs up to your reserve amount.

Buyer can then cancel / retract their bid immediately.

This is a really stupid loophole and a couple of people have spoilt my auctions doing this

But ebay dont care in the slightest :mad:

BargainHunterCat

This feature has good points and bad points. It was very useful for me to pull out when I was bidding on a car and the seller conveniently left it until the last minute then added an "edit" to mention a number of things that were wrong with it that he had previously omitted!

Also if someone makes an honest mistake or changes their mind, surely it is better for them to pull out as soon as possible than go through with the sale and waste the seller's time?

Of course, there will always be those who wilfully abuse features such as these on ebay... :rolleyes:

Hintza

Thats one of the reasons I don't use a reserve. I set my start at lowest price I will accept.


I only use reserves for market research to test the market for new products that might be worth importing. Bit naughty I know but it does allow you to judge what price the market will stand.


As a buyer they just annoy me and I will probably look elsewhere to source an item.

black-saturn

I think it's meant to be for people who have genuinely typed in the wrong amount. Like typed in £100 when they meant £10.

sabbykins

black-saturn wrote:

I think it's meant to be for people who have genuinely typed in the wrong amount. Like typed in £100 when they meant £10.

I have done that myself, typed in £500 instead of £50 :eek:
Boy was i relieved that i could retract it and put the correct amount in!

Spinner

sabbykins wrote:

I have done that myself, typed in £500 instead of £50 :eek:
Boy was i relieved that i could retract it and put the correct amount in!

So have I - got my decimal separators mixed up when using eBay Germany (they use a comma instead of a full stop). So if just for that reason, I'd say the feature's worth keeping.

If you suspect a bid retraction was improper, you can always try reporting them to eBay - I don't know how much notice they'll take, but they might take an interest - perhaps they'll monitor that guy's future bidding.

The steps for reporting them under that offence are:

-> Report problems with other eBay members
--> Problems with buyers
---> Bid retraction was improper