@pburn wrote:
@castlemagicmemories wrote:With all due respect, it's telling you right there to enter the price you intended.
Thus implying it is required to do so. If something is a suggestion, Ebay has stated that.
If it were required, eBay's bid retraction feature would not allow a bidder to retract the bid unless they reentered a new bid. The software would prohibit it from happening. As it stands, a person can retract their bid, using the reason that it was the wrong amount, and walk away. They never have to enter a "corrected" bid. Nothing prohibits that from happening, as we've seen illustrated in so many threads on these discussion boards.
I'm sorry, but I don't see how it can be suggested that a second, corrected bid is required to be entered. What is it exactly that requires it, other than an interpretation of the verbiage I quoted (an interpretation with which I disagree), or prohibits a bidder from retracting and not bidding a second time? With all due respect, I just don't see how you can say it's required when it happens all the time.
If it were required, the bullet point would say, "In this case, you are required to enter the price you intended to bid as soon as you've retracted the incorrect bid." And--the bid retraction software would support that.
Actually, eBay has never followed through to verify if a retraction was valid or not. Nor have they blocked a retraction from taking place if the it is obviously an invalid one. There is no doubt in my mind that eBay could use programs that would verify if a bidder attempting to retract a bid was doing so in violation of their policies.
1) If the reason for the retraction is that the seller changed the listing after the bid was placed, software could easily and instantaneously check to see if that was true or not.
2) If the reason was not being able to contact the seller, software could be used to verify if the seller's contact information on file with eBay is valid. Of course, since eBay has decided to no longer provide this information to trading partners, it is pretty much a moot point and I see no reason for that reason to be included in the choice of three any longer.
3) In the case of the entered wrong bid as a reason, they could easily tell with software that a re-bid was not placed. In fact, they could probably tell if there was truly a typo made or whether the bidder was merely changing the amount of the bid. (After all, if you bid $23.02 it isn't likely that you actually meant to $10.00, is it?! Of course, failure to re-bid shows that there was not an error or typo in the first place and the bidder is merely using that as an excuse.
Frankly, eBay could use technology to monitor this bid retraction situation and simply not allow invalid bids to be made. Even with eBay's history of technical glitches it is reasonable to think that such a programming solution would help alleviate the situation of serial retractions. Of course, this would probably take away from the time that their programmers would have to work on useless features and improvements to the site. Heaven forbid! 
