Can they do that?

[kauvil-us]

Just received an email into my personal inbox from eBay telling me that a bidder had cancelled his/her bid. I went into the messages box of my eBay but found no message telling me about the cancellation. The item in question shows no bids on it. Can a bidder cancel a bid anytime he/she wants? In most auctions, you either cannot cancel your bid or you get a penalty. But what about eBay? But I guess eBay is not a normal auction. Weird!

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@kauvil-us wrote: ... . Can a bidder cancel a bid anytime he/she wants? In most auctions, you either cannot cancel your bid or you get a penalty. ...

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  If an auction has more than 12  hours left, a bidder can retract their bid. There is no penalty other than having the number of retractions show up in your feedback profile.

[kauvil-us]

It all makes sense. Thank you.

[this*old*attic]

@luckythewinner 

And what prevents them? Nothing. EBay even provides a convenient “Pick a Lie” form.

[dk0]

And unless this policy has changed, eBay also allows customers to cancel within an hour (I believe) of purchasing an item.  So they could just win the item, then request to cancel the purchase without paying.

I've had several of those, and I just swallow hard and accept the cancellation.  One was from a guy who was running up bids on certain items I had available, but never seemed to win.  Eventually he won one and actually told me through eBay messages that we was only making other bidders pay more as retribution for "running up the prices" on items he wanted.  So he requested the cancellation, but was sure I should be grateful for running up the bids of my items.

I called CS and reported him.  I was considering sending him a message about the fact that no, I did not appreciate him screwing with my auctions, but I don't recall if I did or if I just blocked him.

[femmefan1946]

He doesn't want to buy it.

He isn't going to pay for it.

Accept the cancellation/retraction.

Move on.

Block him if you like.

All retractions and cancellations have the same reason: "I don't want this."

[femmefan1946]

n most auctions, you either cannot cancel your bid or you get a penalty.

No.

We've been running auctions, four to six a year, public, online, telephone, mail, catalogued, since about 1990. average number of bidders around 300.

Bidders drop out all the time.

No laws broken.

Bidders also wait until after tha auction to tell us they don't want the lot they won.

No laws broken.

Bidders also don't pay for auction lots.

Well there's a broken contract there, but usually not worth taking to Small Claims Court.

The worst we can do is ignore their bids in future, the equivalent of Blocking the bidder.

[equid0x]

Spoiler

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@kauvil-us wrote:

Just went into the item's bid history. It shows that the bidder is "not a registered user" with 0 feedback. Explanation for the bid retraction: "Administrative Cancellation". What the heck does all that mean? I have the bidder's user name, but I won't disclose it here; it may get me in trouble. I will block it tho.

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Sounds like eBay caught a scammer and retracted their bid. 

[equid0x]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

n most auctions, you either cannot cancel your bid or you get a penalty.

No.

We've been running auctions, four to six a year, public, online, telephone, mail, catalogued, since about 1990. average number of bidders around 300.

Bidders drop out all the time.

No laws broken.

Bidders also wait until after tha auction to tell us they don't want the lot they won.

No laws broken.

Bidders also don't pay for auction lots.

Well there's a broken contract there, but usually not worth taking to Small Claims Court.

The worst we can do is ignore their bids in future, the equivalent of Blocking the bidder.

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This depends what state you're in. Some states have laws making bids on auctions binding, and the buyers can be criminally charged for failing to follow-through. 

[equid0x]

I didn't put "spoiler" in my comment with the drop down and I don't know how it got there. When I went back to edit the comment, it said I am out of time to edit and will no longer allow me to edit the comment.

[bigdeals.etc]

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@equid0x wrote:
I didn't put "spoiler" in my comment with the drop down and I don't know how it got there. When I went back to edit the comment, it said I am out of time to edit and will no longer allow me to edit the comment.

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You sure it wasn’t intentional just to try to sound dramatic? Lol

[equid0x]

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@bigdeals.etc wrote:

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@equid0x wrote:
I didn't put "spoiler" in my comment with the drop down and I don't know how it got there. When I went back to edit the comment, it said I am out of time to edit and will no longer allow me to edit the comment.

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You sure it wasn’t intentional just to try to sound dramatic? Lol

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TBH, I don't know how to do that, nor did I even know you could do that. 

[bigdeals.etc]

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@equid0x wrote:

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@bigdeals.etc wrote:

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@equid0x wrote:
I didn't put "spoiler" in my comment with the drop down and I don't know how it got there. When I went back to edit the comment, it said I am out of time to edit and will no longer allow me to edit the comment.

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You sure it wasn’t intentional just to try to sound dramatic? Lol

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TBH, I don't know how to do that, nor did I even know you could do that. 

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Sounds like you have some latent powers that have awoken. I never learned how to do that neither.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

No point in blocking them if they are NARU.  If they want to come back, it will be with a different ID (they're not s'posed to but it happens all the time).  But yeah, you dodged a bullet.