How has a bidder retracted their bid??!!

vickitoria100

Dear MSEs... please help!I am currently selling a load of items on ebay and was pleased to see that they are all going nicely... One particular item was being bid on by a buyer with no feedback and watched by 11 people with 4 days to go. I think the buyer bid yesterday or the day before. However, I have just logged on the check my selling status and the item has now gone back to having no bids as if the bidder had retracted their bid!! How did this happen?Had a search on ebay's help function and it says that a bid may only be retracted if a) Entered wrong amount b) Seller changed item description or c) Cannot contact the seller. The latter two have not happened and I don't see how they could justify the first. Anyway, ebay also state that the retraction must be a) Up to twelve hours before the end of the listing or b) During the last twelve hours of the listing and neither of these are the case!Anyway, surely ebay must send me a notificiation of this if this is what they have done? I haven't received anything!Please help, regards, Vickitoria100

grandslamgirl

Maybe the buyer had tried to contact you - eBay emails are on a serious go slow - up to 24 ish hours

jakemuk

nothing wrong with it people do it all time

rdwarr

It's annoying but I think the buyer has just retracted because they don't want the item. £15 hardly seems a "wrong amount"! They are new to eBay.
Perhaps they hadn't understood that they had to collect from you - they are in Kent so it would be a long trip!
Ignore the "nothing wrong with it people do it all time" comment above. It's not at all true and the poster has a reputation for "wind ups".

vickitoria100

Thanks rdwarr, but I didn't think you were allowed to retract the item just because you didn't want it anymore!
and anyway, the retraction does not fulfill the criteria about timelimits?

frivolous_fay

jakemuk wrote:

nothing wrong with it people do it all time

Perhaps bid retractions fit nicely into your view of how ebay should work, but invalid bid retractions are NOT the correct way to do things.

OP, you are correct about the only legitimate reasons for retracting. Your buyer is guilty of an invalid bid retraction. If you look on your auction, you will see their user name, and also the 'reason' for retracting, which you already know will be false. If you look at their feedback page you will see how many bid retractions they have made.

I don't have much truck with serial retractors and I report them. There is a facility in the ebay safety centre to do this.

vickitoria100

Thanks Fay. It seems they have never bought or sold anything, have been a member for less than a month and retracted 2 bids - not fair surely? Thank you for your advice re: the safety centre. Do you know what the outcome of reporting them would be?

frivolous_fay

jakemuk, this is for you, from ebay's help pages:

'...misuse of the bid retraction option to manipulate the bidding process is not permitted....

Breaches of this policy may result in a range of actions, including:

*Listing cancellation
*Limits on account privileges
*Account suspension
*Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
*Loss of PowerSeller status

jakemuk

frivolous_fay wrote:

Perhaps bid retractions fit nicely into your view of how ebay should work, but invalid bid retractions are NOT the correct way to do things.

OP, you are correct about the only legitimate reasons for retracting. Your buyer is guilty of an invalid bid retraction. If you look on your auction, you will see their user name, and also the 'reason' for retracting, which you already know will be false. If you look at their feedback page you will see how many bid retractions they have made.

I don't have much truck with serial retractors and I report them. There is a facility in the ebay safety centre to do this.

If theyve not used a throw away account to sabotage your auction, I dont do this but i know people who do

jakemuk

rdwarr wrote:

It's annoying but I think the buyer has just retracted because they don't want the item. £15 hardly seems a "wrong amount"! They are new to eBay.
Perhaps they hadn't understood that they had to collect from you - they are in Kent so it would be a long trip!
Ignore the "nothing wrong with it people do it all time" comment above. It's not at all true and the poster has a reputation for "wind ups".

Wind ups nah i just tell the truth unlike others on here ! straight to point

rdwarr

vickitoria100 wrote:

Thanks Fay. It seems they have never bought or sold anything, have been a member for less than a month and retracted 2 bids - not fair surely? Thank you for your advice re: the safety centre. Do you know what the outcome of reporting them would be?

I don't think much would happen. I think they're just treating the whole thing as a game anyway. Add them to your blocked bidder list and I wish you better luck in the future.
You're perfectly correct that they did not have a valid reason for retracting the bid.