Bid retraction or cancellation.

I have not bought very much on ebay for a long time that I have had to bid on. I was bidding on a used amp though, and last night I got outbid on it. So I thought it was gone, which was fine. I didn't care. There is always another amp for sale. In fact, after I got outbid I was looking around and found another amp that I thought that I liked. Luckily I didn't get all excited and put in a bid though, I mean, it had five more days on it, so what's the hurry?

This morning I got an email from ebay telling me that whoever outbid me retracted or cancelled their bid, and I'm the high bidder again. I didn't know that someone could do that. Interesting, and troubling. First of all, it is pretty obvious what my high bid is now. I'm not particularly bothered by it, as I don't even know if I want another amp, except now the seller could get someone to bid it up to my max. But I still think that it is a new ball game all of a sudden and that is a little annoying. The second thing is that I'm glad that I didn't get excited about that other amp, and put a bid on it. I don't want to get stuck buying two amps when I don't even know if I want to buy one. But I don't know what I want from this post actually, I'm just wondering what is going on.

Check and see who retracted their bid and then check if there is a history of them doing this. Sneaky people will sometimes break the rules and attempt to drive up the bids with a fake account, then back out when the well runs dry. This hasn't happened to me in awhile, but I'm not sure if you are obligated to buy in these circumstances.

hoosierhiver said:

Check and see who retracted their bid and then check if there is a history of them doing this. Sneaky people will sometimes break the rules and attempt to drive up the bids with a fake account, then back out when the well runs dry. This hasn't happened to me in awhile, but I'm not sure if you are obligated to buy in these circumstances.

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I was wondering it if was some sort of ploy. I'll check that and see. But even if it is suspicious, I don't know what difference it is going to make at this point.

I have had a similar experience, but I only bid a bit more than the last person, until nearer the end, when I will sometimes put in a maximum bid, but you do get it at the last price you bid at, if no one else has a maximum bid in.

Best advice is to check things out & wait until near the end of its time, (put it on your 'watch list', & just keep an eye on that).

uke1950 said:

I have had a similar experience, but I only bid a bit more than the last person, until nearer the end, when I will sometimes put in a maximum bid, but you do get it at the last price you bid at, if no one else has a maximum bid in.

Best advice is to check things out & wait until near the end of its time, (put it on your 'watch list', & just keep an eye on that).

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That is probably good advise. I tend to bid, then not think about it until I get an e-mail telling me that I either got outbid, or that I won. I'm not always good at playing the game, and maybe I should be if I'm going to buy stuff on ebay. Either way, I guess that they aren't going to get me to pay more than I'm willing to pay for it.

I've seen this happen before and it's often a scam to get more money. The seller bids up their item with a shill account to increase the bid, then retracts the bid once the other bids have been automatically increased. In this case I'd say what's good for the goose is good for the gander, just retract your bid using the reason wrong amount bid (unless of course you really do want the amp and it's still at a good price you're happy with).

You'd be surprised at the amount of shill bidding sellers do on ebay, it's happened to me a few times and in almost all cases the bidder that retracts has a feedback of 20 or less as it's an account they only ever really use to up bid their own items. I'd be interested to know what feedback your retracted bidder has (I could of course just be cynical and it may be a genuine retraction...)

Not all bid retractions are suspicious. Could also be an honest person, and life happened and they had to back out.

eBay allows for this, however in the Terms of Service, they caution you that if you habitually cancel your bids, you will eventually be banned from eBay, so if a shill bidder is doing this, he is eventually going to have to keep creating new accounts. I dont know the exact threshold, but recall something about that if as a buyer, you cancel close to or above 25% of your bids, your privileges are suspended for a fixed period of time, and if you keep it up, they just ban the account forever.

Also, back when I was an avid eBay user, I once bid on, and was winning an item, and then I found it for the same price as my bid on Amazon (with free Prime shipping) about an hour later, so I went back and cancelled/retracted my bid and bought it from Amazon. I think in maybe 15 yrs of using eBay, I might have canceled all of 3 bids for over 200 actual purchases.

Nowadays I find the eBay 'auctions' a PITA and will typically check the box to only show me items that are 'Buy It Now', 'Free Shipping', 'PayPal accepted' and 'Located in USA', and then I SORT the results by 'Price (low to high)' and I find that this makes eBay a lot less stressful to use and prevents me from being shown sub-par items that ship from Shenzen and take 30+ days to arrive here in the USA. I will also NOT buy from someone who has less than 99% feedback or who has been on eBay less than a year.

'Once bitten, twice shy' and 'Caveat Emptor' both apply here.

I just retracted a bid on a harmonica last night after I found out I will be getting one for my birthday.
Retracting bids is normal. If it happens to you and you think it is because of nefarious reasons then simply retract your bid as well.

I remember looking at the account history on a retracted bid once and ebay shows you if that account has retracted bids from the same seller in the past so you can more easily guess if it's shady. In my case it showed they had done this with 30% of their bids, so it was pretty clear something weird was going on.

Cobainpain said:

I've seen this happen before and it's often a scam to get more money. The seller bids up their item with a shill account to increase the bid, then retracts the bid once the other bids have been automatically increased. In this case I'd say what's good for the goose is good for the gander, just retract your bid using the reason wrong amount bid (unless of course you really do want the amp and it's still at a good price you're happy with).

You'd be surprised at the amount of shill bidding sellers do on ebay, it's happened to me a few times and in almost all cases the bidder that retracts has a feedback of 20 or less as it's an account they only ever really use to up bid their own items. I'd be interested to know what feedback your retracted bidder has (I could of course just be cynical and it may be a genuine retraction...)

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100% feedback. It is probably nothing. It is probably just like Booli says. My max bid is my max bid, so by chance or by design, that is how much I am willing to pay for it. It is just that we all hope that it does not come to that max bid, and we get it for a little less, and we feel like we got a deal. I guess that is where I'm at. Anyway, I bid on it, and we will see where it goes. I'll make sure to let everyone know.

Rllink said:

100% feedback. It is probably nothing. It is probably just like Booli says. My max bid is my max bid, so by chance or by design, that is how much I am willing to pay for it. It is just that we all hope that it does not come to that max bid, and we get it for a little less, and we feel like we got a deal. I guess that is where I'm at. Anyway, I bid on it, and we will see where it goes. I'll make sure to let everyone know.

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FYI the % of feedback is how much POSITIVE feedback, but then ALSO there is another number next to the eBay member's name and that is how many 'happy' points they have from transactions. I forget what eBay calls it, but I call it happy points.

Personally for someone with 100% feedback and like 7 happy points tells me that this person has had little experience on eBay and if it is a 1:1 ratio, then ONLY 7 transactions, which may or may NOT be a large enough sample to measure...but this person is off to a good start and may in fact be an honest person...which I'd also balance with how long they've been a member on eBay...

Whereas, if someone has 97% feedback and 40,000 happy points, then this person has done a HUGE number of transactions, and only 3% were with unhappy trading partners, still 3% of 40,000 is 1,200 folks that gave this person negative feedback, and for my comfort level, that is enough to stay away from this person...

None of this is carved in stone, but all comes from lessons learned the hard way over time...

Keep in mind that YMMV.

Used to be the a bidder could not retract their bid within the final 24 hours of an auction; I think it was an eBay attempt to thwart the "pump and retract" scam. I don't now if this rule is still in place.

I do not proceed with second chance offers through eBay because I can never tell if they are a scam, or truly eBay authorized.

You are not obligated to buy because of the previous, winning bidders actions.

I think that Booli was right. It looks like in the end I got the amp that I was bidding on for a few dollars less than my max bid. I'm glad. I've bid on a couple of amps that I lost, and at the same time I've been working on getting an amp that I already have to do what I wanted to do, and that just wasn't going to happen. I do need to sell the one that wasn't going to work out. All is well though. Of course, everything always works out in the end, doesn't it?

Rllink said:

I think that Booli was right. It looks like in the end I got the amp that I was bidding on for a few dollars less than my max bid. I'm glad. I've bid on a couple of amps that I lost, and at the same time I've been working on getting an amp that I already have to do what I wanted to do, and that just wasn't going to happen. I do need to sell the one that wasn't going to work out. All is well though. Of course, everything always works out in the end, doesn't it?

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Gotta love a happy ending, no?

Maybe now you can donate that Marshall amp to a school, or to one of the kids who wants to play guitar that lives at least a few blocks away (LOL)....you know pay-it forward...

shaka - Booli

Booli said:

Gotta love a happy ending, no?

Maybe now you can donate that Marshall amp to a school, or to one of the kids who wants to play guitar that lives at least a few blocks away (LOL)....you know pay-it forward...

shaka - Booli

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Maybe I should just give it to my friend who bought the guitar that came with it. After all, he paid me the same for just the guitar as I paid for them both. It seems fair, although he bought the guitar as a decoration for his bar, not to play. But maybe he will if he has the amp? Anyway, thanks for all the help on the other thread, even if it did convince me that it wasn't worth all the effort.

Rllink said:

Maybe I should just give it to my friend who bought the guitar that came with it. After all, he paid me the same for just the guitar as I paid for them both. It seems fair, although he bought the guitar as a decoration for his bar, not to play. But maybe he will if he has the amp? Anyway, thanks for all the help on the other thread, even if it did convince me that it wasn't worth all the effort.

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Good idea...maybe invite him over to jam out, give him the amp and show him some ukulele chords (or guitar chords if you know them), and see if he has an affinity for it.

Or you could print out a guitar chord sheet and maybe a song or two, of easy 2-3 chord songs and learn them first on uke, and then try to teach them to him on guitar, and then you've got an easy start to a jamming partner....that is if he has interest and keeps going with it...

'This Could Be The Start Of Something Big" (Jack Jones)