@2011donnalee1,
Wow, you have a whole list of problems mentioned in your post.
"I recfeived a message from another bidder that she wanted to know if she won because she got a message from Ebay (there were 3 days left in the auction)that the listing ended".
Sounds like the person must have confused your auction with another one. There were several lots of AG clothing that ended a few days before your auction ended.
"She later told me that she put an auto bidding of $150 in (I just found this out today (3 days AFTER the auction ended)and her auto bidding did NOT go through".
I think what @kathiec , wrote about bidding in the last seconds may be true. eBay's countdown clock may not always show the correct time on a buyer's device. There can be delays of several seconds from the time info is transmitted from ebay, to the time it is received and displayed. If she waited too long to try and place her bid, the auction may have actually ended while she was bidding.
I also noticed that you had a couple of very low feedback buyers bid on the auction. If the buyer who contacted you had a very low number, they may have run into ebay's new buyer limit. It can be hard to explain it, but if your bidder does have a very low feedback number or hasn't bought in over a year (check her feedback profile page) let us know and one of us will explain how the limit works with bidding.
"I did my first auction, and on about the 3rd and 4th day 2 bidders retracted their bids and my bids stopped coming in at that point".
It looks like the (14) feedback bidder placed what we call a nuclear bid (one they think is so high they do not think others will get close to that amount) They may have decided to back out later, especially when they saw their nuclear price had been outbid, by the very high FB bidder. The high feedback bidder may have backed out because of the first retraction and the amounts the (0) bidder had placed. All of which would have been visible before the retractions.
You can check the feedback profile pages of the two who retracted, and when you click on their feedback As a buyer, you'll see the (14) bidder has retracted 5 times in the last month. The high FB bidder has only retracted once. The one on your auction.
Even with the retractions, your auction ended with the (+, -) results of similar auctions.
Do not let the bid retractions cause you not to use the auction format. I use that format for 90+% of my listings for vintage items. In all my years of selling have only had one auction seriously hurt by bid retractions.
Keep in mind most serious bidders do not bid until the last seconds of an auction (we call that sniping) As a serious sniper myself, I do not look at bid histories before placing my bid. You'll find that 99.99% of the time the snipers pay. I'll bet the sniper/winner of that auction paid very soon after the auction ended.
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FOOLPROOF, BECAUSE FOOLS ARE SO DARNED INGENIOUS!" (unknown)
