Bid Retraction question ...

[mr_lincoln]

Can a Buyer retract a bid on an Auction without replacing it with another bid?  I had a bid retracted on an item and it was the only bid ... I thought I read somewhere "way back when" that Buyers could retract a bid but then had to replace it with another bid ... and Sellers were the only ones who could "cancel" a bid upon request from the Buyer.

[buyselljack2016]

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@trembpy wrote:

The same thing just happened to me. Feedback on the buyer shows that he has done this over 20 times with different sellers over the past month alone! Spent 15 minutes on the phone with eBay to be told there is nothing they can do. Then why bother having an official policy saying that buyers are responsible for their bids (with some exceptions of course)... You can always cancel a bid by saying you entered an incorrect amount... in my case, it was the starting bid amount...a real joke! 

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Would you really want to deal with a buyer that does not want the item?

The buyer did you a favor by retracting the bid rather than letting it go, and refusing to pay, or paying then returning the item at your expense for a full  refund.

you dodged a bullet.

[7606dennis]

While it is my opinion that bid retractions should never be allowed for any reason, eBay allows them for three reasons.  One is because the seller changed the description, but since seller's cannot do that on eBay I'm wondering about the validity of that one.  I suppose the seller could add to the description making it less desirable to some bidders but in that case I would suggest that sellers accept any bid cancellation requests after adding to a description rather than the bidder having to retract.

The second reason eBay allows is that they cannot contact the seller.  However, this was meant to be if the seller didn't have a valid email or phone number on file with eBay.  Since eBay, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't give bidders access to the seller's email address or phone number for fear of them making an off site deal, I question the validity of that excuse also.

The third reason was bidding the wrong amount as in the bidder making a typo.  The requirement was that the bidder was required to immediately enter a bid for the corrected amount.  However, since the bidder has the opportunity to double check their bid prior confirming it I can't see the validity in that either.

Of course, since eBay has made it nearly impossible to report invalid bid retractions there is little that the seller can do.  Thank you, eBay.

I've never tried to hide my personal policy of blocking bidder's with more than one retraction on their record.  Unfortunately, eBay doesn't live by their own policy as much as I do mine.

[katydid2515]

A buyer just retracted their bid within less than a day of my auction ending.  I did not receive any notification that a bid was canceled nor was I able to find out who the bidder was so I could check on their feedback.  Besides, I am not sure a seller can give much of anything besides positive feedback.....or how would I go about giving less than glowing feedback for bidders that have tried to back out of auctions they won and non-payers altogether.  Those two incidents have been getting more frequent for me.