Don't take it personally my friend. I don't always see everything everyone writes.

Per your comment, if you don't want to pay an AH there's nothing they can do other than cancel your account and threat to sue which will only make sense at a certain threshold.

I agree that the bidding retracting policy is rather garbage on ebay, but they do have semi-transparency. I much prefer that to the zero transparency that offbay AHs have.

Ideally, the buyer would have to go through a more stringent process to retract bids, as you suggest - and there would be more sever consequences for nefarious behavior such as a clear pattern of bid retraction to shill items.

There is room for improvement everywhere, and part of the responsibility falls on us bringing it to the attention of those who can actually do something about it.