posted on April 5, 2001 02:56:58 PM
One of my auctions was up to $52. The high bidder just retracted (item is now down at $19 with only 90 minutes to go). I checked the bidder's record and he/she has retracted bids 23 times within the last month. The reason for mine was "wrong item."
How many retractions are too many? Should I send a note to eBay, or just grit my teeth and let it go?
posted on April 5, 2001 03:01:05 PM
With that kind of bid retraction history, you might want to check the current high bidder's ISP to see if the bid-retractor and the new high bidder are related somehow. I would also check both of their bid histories to see if they bid on the same items frequently. Could be some bid shielding going on. Can't hurt to check...
edited to ask: does the new high bidder have any bid retractions in their history?
posted on April 5, 2001 03:37:26 PM
Do as reddeer suggests. And tell this guy not to bid on your stuff anymore. Copy that email to ebay as well. If he ever bids on your stuff again, ebay will ban him.
posted on April 5, 2001 06:00:38 PM
Thanks for this post mouselady, I was just coming here to ask the same question. I am 1 year old on Ebay today. and guess what I got my very first bid retraction. the reason given was made a mistake bid on wrong item. I went to her me page and lo and behold in big bold letters was WIDGET LOVER, she went on and on about these widgets, well that was the widget I was selling. she has been on ebay 6 months and has 14 bid retractions. Also last night I received an email asking all kings of assorted sundry questions about this particular auction from the same ISP as the bid retracter, I think they are the same person and after twenty questions did not like an answer. the questions were just ridiculous. Believe me I feel I answered them honestly. Do you think I should report her to Safe Harbor also?
posted on April 5, 2001 06:11:05 PM
Thanks, all, for your advice. I reported the situation to Safeharbor.
I checked into the possible bid shielding angle, but it doesn't seem likely in this case.
I can (mostly) understand the occasional need for a bid retraction (honest mistake; newbie overenthusiasm; sudden family crisis; etc.), but this bidder was averaging nearly 6 per week for the past month --- hardly the isolated "exceptional" case that the eBay rules allow.
Don't know if they'll do anything about it, but I feel better.
posted on April 5, 2001 06:42:55 PM
Thanks so much for sharing your post with me mouselady, I just made my report to safe harbor and you are right, I do not know if anything is going to happen. but, I do feel better doing it.
Latte
posted on April 5, 2001 09:43:47 PM
It's my experience that eBay does not care at all about bid retractions. I honestly believe you could retract 100 auctions and still be a member in good standing. Also, your reasons could include "Peanut butter," "Livin' La Vida Loca" and "Sneezed."
In fact, I think we should have a contest to find the eBay member with the most bid retractions. I would be amused to find that someone who I am guessing has more than 200 retractions and is still puttering around eBay.
posted on April 5, 2001 09:51:14 PM
Personally, for myself, if a bidder has more then 3 retractions in a month, I cancil thier bid. I have done that, and received email from 2 of them, but I stand by my items, and do not want anyone to think I am shilling them.
In the begining, God created the heavens and the earth.
posted on April 6, 2001 09:09:17 AM
How do you get bid retractions to show up? Or does it take time to get into the ebay system? I had a bidder retract a bid and her reason "My parents said it cost too much". Excuse me? How old is this person?? So I check feedback history and I don't see anything and it doesn't even show up under "check all auctions bid on by this user" You say it goes into the feedback profile??
posted on April 6, 2001 09:54:46 AM
Retractions are, at least IMO, intended to give someone a second chance, in case they made a mistake or their kid got on and bid on $700 worth of stuff. Obviously, it's being abused, and contrary to the "contract"-like language on the pages.
One way eBay could solve the problem while still allowing retractions would be to set some hard limits on retractions. My recommendations would be:
For any one year (based on user's signup date): Unlimited number of retractions within a single twenty-four hour period (e.g. erasing the damage from a kid or one's own overenthusiasm), plus one other single retraction sometime else in the year. Every retraction beyond those should result in one automatic negative.
On one hand, this shouldn't be that hard to program. OTOH, it would be more complexity to an already crash-prone site, and it would once again raise the "venue" question. Still, it seems eBay, in trying to solve one problem (allowing a way out so someone isn't tempted to deadbeat), created another.
Obviously, people should be responsible for their own decisions or the oversight of their children, but what I suggest could be a good compromise between this and the rest. Maybe.
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
posted on April 6, 2001 10:02:32 AMglassgrl: Any bid retractions on a particular item should show up in the "Bid History" link from the auction page for that item, as you've seen already.
A user's bid retraction history should show up in their feedback history, but unlike FB with its comments, retractions only show up as totals on the "ID card." As far as I know, you don't get to see all of the excuses someone made , unless you can track down the auctions they've bid on within the last month or two.
Maybe all the excuses... er, retraction comments should be visible, just like FB itself is....
[ Edited an additional phrase into the last paragraph. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Apr 6, 2001 10:20 AM ]
posted on April 6, 2001 06:15:31 PM
Bid retractions like... "buying it elsewhere/cheaper/sooner" should be reported to safe harbor if the bidder has a history of bid retractions... 23 in one month is about 22 more than any user should ever have.
Some bidders try to make it look like eBay retracted their bid by using "Administrative Cancellation" ... which is the phrase eBay uses when it cancels a bid.
posted on April 6, 2001 09:49:56 PM
Don't hold your breath for Safe Harbor to do anything. I had a woman retract a bid last week on one of my auctions, and when I checked her bid retraction history I found that she had a total at that time of 78 retractions in the last 6 months. I reported her that same day, and Safe Harbor responded a few days later with it's canned "we have warned this bidder against this kind of activity, ......Thank you for helping to make eBay a safer place to...." Well, she is still happily bidding and retracting, the last time I checked a number of days ago she was up to 82.
posted on April 8, 2001 04:18:18 PM
I just found a seller who has 24 bid retractions in the past 7 days. She has several items up for sale, all starting at very low prices ($1, $2) and most of her bidders have less than 5 feedbacks.
Possible bid shilling? And even if it's not bid shilling, I would call that irresponsible bidding, wouldn't you?
posted on April 8, 2001 09:26:33 PM
I ended up retracting a bid when I kept seeing the same seller with a dutch auction selling items (coins valued at about $10) and they had 4 auctions and each auction listed 1700 items. Quickly doing the math, I began to doubt they had $68,000 worth of coins sitting around their business. I retracted my bid when their was still 6 days and as it was a dutch auction with quantity remaining it didn't affect anything.
Other times when I have had a VALID reason to retract was when another buyer retracted after making 10 or 12 bids until they hit my maximum. Once they reached it they retracted within 5 minutes. I saw that has shill bidding. I wasn't going to mess with that.
Shill bidding (or at least what looks like it ) and retraction by another bidder (to faciliate shill bidding) are valid reasons to also retract. People over pay on auctions now because they cannot view email addresses any longer to determine the validity of other bidders.
posted on April 10, 2001 09:38:08 AM
Hi, just thought I would let you all know that I turned in that ebayer who had 24 bid retractions in the past 7 days and this was the response I just received from SafeHarbor:
Thank you for taking the time to contact us with this information.
I have reviewed the information that you have provided and wanted to let you know that xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx has been warned against any future occurrence of this type of activity.
I would like to thank you for your help in keeping eBay a fun and safe place to trade.
Regards,
Adrian SafeHarbor Investigations Team
Just wish I knew what the limit was that determines the warning or not.
posted on April 10, 2001 11:25:29 AM
I don't think Ebay gives a darn if someone is shilling. Last year, I caught one of my customers who also was selling on ebay shilling RED HANDED. She mistakenly sent an email to me that was meant for a friend. It said, "I need you to cancel your bid on xxxx with a reason, "xxx", and then bid on ebay #xxxxx".
When I looked at the bidding history of her items I found that her friend was always bidding up the items she was selling, but never won any of them!
I sent all the appropriate information to EBAY along with a copy of her email to me.
She was suspended for 24 hours, and then she was back! Sure, she was spending THOUSANDS of dollars on ebay and, as a result, creating lots of profits for ebay.... so they suspended her suspension! (ebay's motto: "Our profits come first!"
Thank you for taking the time to contact us with this information.
I have reviewed the information that you have provided and wanted to let
you know that I have suspended the member 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxx' that you
alerted us to.
Also, here is a quick overview of bid retractions:
It's OK to retract a bid if...
* You accidentally enter a wrong bid amount. For instance, you bid
$99.50 instead of $9.95.
* The item description of something you're bidding on has changed - a
lot !
* You cannot authenticate the seller's identity.
It's NOT OK to retract a bid if...
* You change your mind about the item.
* You decide you can't really afford it.
* You bid a little higher than you wanted
I would like to thank you for your help in keeping eBay a fun and safe
place to trade.
Regards,
Orwell
eBay SafeHarbor
Investigations Team
______________________________
eBay
Your Personal Trading Community (tm)
*****************************************************
When I just checked out her auctions, she IS suspended! Wow! I think they must have found something going on with her in order to email me twice about this and suspend her!
posted on April 10, 2001 09:16:35 PM
Maybe someone from eBay is reading this thread. But I can't believe they can say with a straight face when it is "not OK to retract" when people can retract a bid for absolutely any reason with no fear of eBay doing anything.
It makes me want to retract a bid and write "Ha Ha eBay loves bid retractors!"
, unless you can track down the auctions they've bid on within the last month or two.
