Never, but there have been a few times where I wanted to. I view it as a binding agreement. That said, if I accidentally enter too many digits, I will try to retract.

Going on 20 years on eBay - 0 bid retractions. Can't understand how they ethically allow people to repeatedly retract and abuse the process.

There have been plenty of threads on Ebay bid retractions lately so I didn't want to start a new thread and opted to use the most recently commented in thread for this post.

Lately I have been on both sides of the bid retraction.

Last week I bid an amount but did not have the high bid. So I went on to reallocate my money elsewhere. The high bidder then proceeded to retract their high bid leaving me with the high bid. I tried to retract as I no longer had the funds to cover the price, but couldn't because it was within 12 hours of the auction end. I politely told the seller the situation and he cancelled the sale after the auction ended with me as the winner. It is possible that the person that retracted their bid and left me holding the bag had retracted because someone had done the same to them because there was another bidder that retracted their bid.

Now I have some items for sale with .99 cent starting bids. I got an email stating one of the items had a bid, but when I went to see how things were going it didn't have one. I checked and someone had bid and retracted the bid. They put the reason as wrong amount, but then never put a new bid in.
I went on to see that the person has to retracted bids in the last 6 months.

This make me realize how hard it really would be for a large auction house to police since as a seller I didn't get an email stating someone had retracted the bid. What I don't like is that ebay is so flippant about it. To really cut down on it maybe you should have to call ebay to remove the bid, most people wouldn't put up with the hassle if they had to talk to customer service to retract a bid. Then as added protection to only allow so many in a year's time, before a suspension. Just a thought.

Andy,
eBay always send a notification when someone retracts a bid. Perhaps your notifications aren't set correctly in your account.

I have never been notified when a buyer retracts their bid. I have checked all of the communication settings in my eBay control panel and do not see anything about bid retraction communications.

Can you please let us know where the setting is?

Thanks,

Jeff

Because of your response I did find the email that ebay sent, it is an account setting on my email side I will have to fix.

Retracted my first bid in 1999 :-( .
As I realized the card was a reprint.

Learned my lesson. Think I retracted one more as I entered the wrong amount, not 100% sure thhough

0 times in approx. 20 years.

Jeff,

I know that there are settings to send and receive certain type of notifications. I am assuming there is one to receive notifications about retractions. I don't know exactly where they are. When i wasn't receiving certain notifications, I called eBay's customer service and they walked me thru it.

1 bid retraction within the last couple months. I accidently, instead of hitting the period/dot button on my number keypad, hit the 3 instead.
Admittedly, I did it in a hurry and didn't double check before I confirmed, but I ended up bidding $10,397 instead of $10,97. :o

I immediately retracted the bid, stated the reason why then rebid the correct amount.

As to Andy's question, I have asked that numerous times without ever receiving an answer? I always wondered/wanted to know, if the seller refuses to cancel the sale, are you obligated to purchase the card?

I assume, as nobody can force you to pay, that you'd be left with negative feedback, but is there anymore to it than that?

You wouldn't get a negative, as eBay doesn't allow sellers to leave negatives.
That's on of the 10,000 issues I have with feeBay.

-kin

Thanks Howard...I will try calling. I looked again and just can't seem to find it.

Jeff

I think 1
 

Chance it was 2. One time back when you could see buyers a good friend warned me he had been ripped off by a seller so I retracted bid. There was one other time I asked a question and got a vulgar rude response. I can't remember if I had retracted my bid or was outbid after I got the rude response.

Only one time. I retracted an offer I made on a buy it now/best offer after finding the same item much cheaper almost 2 days after making the offer. Normally I would not do this but the 48 hour window for the buyer to respond was almost up anyway. I have been an active ebay user since 1998.

I've been on eBay since 2001, I know of one because I was half asleep and put the bid in wrong. I can't remember any others.