Retracting Bids

tinkerbell212

Hi, been selling a few things on ebay and now I had a buyer who retraced a bid. Still 4 days to go, but wondered, can people just do that willy nilly?? Because my fear is that someone bids and retracts 5 minutes before closure and eventual other buyers would then not buy my item. I mean, this would be an easy way to seriously sabotage your competitors wouldn't it? Anybody got any experience with this (am quite miffed here..)

frivolous_fay

You can report them if it was an invalid bid retraction. The ONLY circumstances under which a bid retraction are valid are:

- The item description has changed and the item is no longer suitable
- Wrong bid amount was entered. (If this option is picked, the bidder must immediately bid the correct amount, otherwise the retraction is considered invalid)

You can look at the user to see how many bid retractions they have made. If it's a lot, I'd report them. Heck, I'd report them anyway.

I was extremely gutted when someone retracted a bid from one of my auctions recently because they were winning a similar item on another auction. It took the price down by about £30... luckily it recovered before auction end.

soolin

tinkerbell212 wrote:

Hi, been selling a few things on ebay and now I had a buyer who retraced a bid. Still 4 days to go, but wondered, can people just do that willy nilly?? Because my fear is that someone bids and retracts 5 minutes before closure and eventual other buyers would then not buy my item. I mean, this would be an easy way to seriously sabotage your competitors wouldn't it? Anybody got any experience with this (am quite miffed here..)

This does happen ocassionally, but it isn't very common. If you look at the feedback page for the person who retracted his bid it will show you how many other bids he has retracted in the past 6 months. If he makes a habit of it report him to ebay.


Soo

Mr_Squiddy

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/buy/questions/retract-bid.html has all the details.

I wouldn't waste too much time pursuing this retraction. There may be a genuine reason why the bidder has retracted. It is also better that he withdraws now rather than after the auction has ended.

tinkerbell212

After 2 days the bid has been retracted with as reason: Entered wrong amount.

No other bid made by this person. He does have 100% feedback. How can you see whether he retracted bids before??

becky004

I retracted a bid once as I put the decimal in the wrong place i.e. 3460. instead of 34.60. This pushed another automated bid on the item up to £47. Once my bid had been retracted I did rebid on the item, even though it was more than I intended to pay as I didn't want the seller to lose out because of my mistake. I didn't win it though!

tinkerbell212

Still no correction.. It just annoys me that people are like this. I have been stung a few times now lately and really cannot afford to. Not sure what to do with this person, can I really be bothered to go to all the effort of reporting him. But then he might do it to someone else..

frivolous_fay

Mr_Squiddy wrote:

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/buy/questions/retract-bid.html has all the details.

I wouldn't waste too much time pursuing this retraction. There may be a genuine reason why the bidder has retracted. It is also better that he withdraws now rather than after the auction has ended.

If you have not placed a corrected bid, and the seller has not changed the item description, there IS no genuine reason. If there was a personal reason for retracting, the rules say you have to ask the seller to cancel your bid.

OP, if you look on the bidder's feedback page it will show you the number of bid retractions.

tinkerbell212

When would you report it to Ebay. Now or wait till the listing is finished (in 4 days?)

frivolous_fay

Any time. It doesn't matter, he won't be bidding again.

tinkerbell212

Thanks Fay, cannot believe people would risk their rating but there you go. If the bid doesn't go over the amount that I had I will report it to eBay!!