Why did my item bid drop in value?

[thewondershoppe]

I have two items I'm selling, which both have seen a significant decrease in the bidding. I wasn't aware that a bid could go down in value. Any idea how this happen?

[woodland_gnome · Accepted solution]

You had a retraction (by a serial retractor*) on 174469320521.   You should be able to find the reason the bidder GAVE for the retraction on the Bid History Page, in the section on cancellations and retractions below the main history (except eBay keeps reformatting pages, way too often with loss of functionality).  Note that one retraction made prior to 12 hours before the scheduled end of the auction removes all bids that bidder placed on that auction, though information on only 1 bid will be displayed (after the 12 hour deadline it removes only the 1 bid leaving any prior ones by that bidder).  You need to be logged in under the same ID you listed with, as only the seller and the particular bidder are allowed to see the reasons and the full ID of the bidder. 

Go to the Listing Page for the auction (the one with the Description and the Shipping and Payments tab) and from there click on the # of bid display (even if "0 bids") to get to the Bid History Page. 

And the reason given (actually picked from a list of the 3 valid reasons eBay allows) is usually a lie.  eBay does nothing to enforce its rules on retraction for other than those 3 valid reasons (actually only 2 remain, the one about being unable to contact the seller requires an invalid email or phone number which are no longer made available to bidders).  You can see the number of bid retractions that bidder has made in the past 12 months on his/her Feedback Profile, "Feedback as a Buyer" tab.

There was NOT any reduction in the current bid amount on the other one.  Likely you got the two confused.

*The retractor has 48 retractions, including this one, in the last 6 months.  You can see the total for the last 12 months on the feedback as a buyer tab of his feedback profile (click on his feedback score following his actual User ID, which you can see (not us) on the Bid History Page