Bid retractions?

[Walker]

Is it just me, or does this type of bid activity seem odd? A shill?

[Jonnydread]

Yeah that's a really high number. Proceed with caution.

[Walker]

This person was bidding against me..... Bid me up until they hit my max, and then retract theirs? No retraction on this auction, I just check because I like to know as much as possible about the competition.

[Jonnydread]

That almost sounds like the seller has a shadow account and is upping the bids. Kind of sketchy IMO

[BrickHaus]

You can retract bids? Seems odd. But what were you bidding for? Maybe message the seller and tell em you will pay x since the last x bids are invalid.

[Pumps4ever]

Ebay is so hard to gauge. Lots of people offing their problems, there is good but lots of bad as well!

[Walker]

I bid what I am willing to pay, right off the bat. If I get outbid, oh well....

In this case, I made a mistake and made my limit $201.... As soon as some one bid $200, my auto bid was $201, which tells anyone that it is my max, since the bid increments are $10...

At that point, if they wanted it, all they had to do was bid over $201. If they were bidding me up, they would know that any further bids would break my limit. At that point they would be best to wait to see if anyone went over my $201.....


Walker

[Chuck E Ducky]

I didn’t even know you could retract bids. What stops people from bidding up their own stuff with a spoof account and retracting it at the last min. I thought when you bid it was final. I don’t really do eBay anymore but this is one more reason not to.

[Rusty Brass]

Same. I've never seen a "retract" button.

[rawbutter]

I retracted a bid once when I didn't read a description carefully enough. It was a few years ago, and perhaps the process has changed since then. But back then I couldn't just back out. I had to send a request to the seller, and they could let me off the hook if they accepted my explanation.

But that's waaaay different than 135 retractions in 30 days. That seems fishy to me. That's more than 4 every day. Who buys that much on eBay?

[Chuck E Ducky]

Well that would be easy if you controlled both accounts. Wouldn’t it.

[BlindFaith429]

Yeah, something looks odd to me as well. Even the number of items bid on seems high, over 1,000 in a month? Jeeze.

Then again, I use to work with someone who would do a part-time gig buying and selling on eBay. Buy something that is miss-labeled or buy cheap from goodwill, sell high with nice pictures/ description.

Its possible this is one of those accounts as well, but as you said, the retraction rate seems awfully high.