Newbie help please on bid retraction

Mummyroo

Hi I'm a newbie here but could really do with some of your wisdom. I am fairly new to ebay though have sold a few bits and pieces with no problems before. I am currently selling an outfit on behalf of my mum and it's due to finish this evening. This morning an ebay member entered about 6 bids for my item building up to a bid of £250, the previous highest bidder had obviously entered a bid higher than £250 as ebay auto bid her up to £255. Then 45 minutes later the £250 bidder retracted that bid claiming she had entered a wrong amount and changed to £175, obviously this meant my winning bid fell to £180. I can't see why she would do this? am I missing something? she wasn't winning so wasn't obliged to buy the item, not that I believe you can mistakenly enter £250 when you meant £175. Looks like she was punting to see how much my highest bidder was prepared to pay, but why then retract? Is this legit? do you have any advice for me? Please help mum is gutted she thought she was going to get £255 for her outfit!!!
thanks!!

frivolous_fay

It's not really allowed, but there's not much you can do about it.
What do you think the outfit is worth?
I would be very tempted to cancel their bids and block them, so their nasty little tactics can't get them a surprise bargain now that they know the max bid of the other bidder... but of course that means that the price will drop, at least temporarily.

How long does the listing have to run?

Mummyroo

Thanks for the reply didn't think it seemed right, the outfit is probably worth about somewhere between £200 and £300 judged on what others similar have gone for. The worse thing is that there are 60+ people watching the outfit and if any of them saw the bidding this morning they will now know that the current highest bidder is prepared to pay much more so are unlikely to even try bidding. Very naff flaw in the system that is disappointed and feel conned.

Smart_But_Casual

She is simply working out the highest bid. No drama.

Mummyroo

Smart_But_Casual wrote: »

She is simply working out the highest bid. No drama.

Thanks I had figured that was probably the reason for it, I just didn't think it was allowed to fish for highest bids like that, and wondered if there was anything I could do as seller.

kprigg

Im not sure how you do it, but Im sure you can try reporting them via ebay.
You may not get anywhere as the bidder did submit nother bid, but Im sure I saw something on Ebay saying that you are not allowed to retract a bid just to see the highest bidders amount.

frivolous_fay

It's not quite bid shielding, but that's the closest I can find to it in ebay's help pages.

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/buy/bid-retract.html

Smart_But_Casual

Mummyroo wrote: »

Thanks I had figured that was probably the reason for it, I just didn't think it was allowed to fish for highest bids like that, and wondered if there was anything I could do as seller.

Why would you want to do anything?

They've bid and now they know how much they need to bid to win as it stands.

Mummyroo

Ok perhaps my first post was not clear enough! They don't know how much they have to bid at all because their bid wasn't the winning bid someone else has bid higher! Oh well, thanks those of you who suggested I contact ebay I have done and they have investigated and quote "taken the appropiate action" whatever that means. Will just have to chalk it down to dodgy ebay tactics and hope that it doesn't happen again.
Thanks

wookeyhole1

i had this problem with a buyer. they bid on 4 of my computer games and retracted all of them within an hour. then a couple of days later bid on the same item again. i reported them to ebay and basically got a standard reply saying 'sorry you feel that way about a bidder blah blah blah' and if i wanted to persue the matter contact them again. i did this and blocked them and they said they would investigate. that was the last i hear of it

jasmineswhiskers

Mummyroo wrote: »

The worse thing is that there are 60+ people watching the outfit and if any of them saw the bidding this morning they will now know that the current highest bidder is prepared to pay much more so are unlikely to even try bidding. Very naff flaw in the system that is disappointed and feel conned.

Chances are most of the watchers won't have seen it if it happened within a 45min time frame.