Buyer Retraced Bid - Lied About The Reason

Question

So I had a buyer recently retract a bid after a day of having placed the bid. They said their reason for retracting was because I changed the description of the item after the bid on it but I have not touched the listing one but since I listed it.

Is there anything I can do about this?

woodland_gnome · Answer

Unfortunately eBay seems to have had no interest in enforcing the rule against lying to retract a bid for the past decade or so. It appears they don't want to have to pay enough employees to investigate reports or seek out serial retractors (or even program a bot to check that the seller has not changed the description or determine that the amount of the bid was a likely typo and whether the retractor then rebid the amount it was a likely typo for). All they seem to have done about invalid retractions in the meantime is remove the "unable to contact seller" reason (several years after they stopped giving out contact information--which that reason was actually about--to bidders) and do away with retractions altogether in trading card categories where "bid shielding" (bidder using multiple accounts to drive up the minimum bid amount and then retract to drop the price just before the end) was running rampant.

Add him/her to your Block Bidder/Buyer List.

On the plus side (for this situation), they removed the ability of anyone other than the seller and the bidder to see the reason given for retractions and cancellations, so picking that lie instead of "Entered wrong amount" doesn't affect the amount of damage a retraction can do to an auction.