[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

You think he has 93 bid retractions with a single seller he had a conversation with?

I didn't see him mentioning a conversation or an agreement was made with ANY seller he made a retraction on. Just that they were lower end items, they didn't involve baseball, and thus it didn't matter that he pulled his bid on those auctions.

As long as he wasn't affecting the higher end baseball market, it was ok in his mind.

......on top of that, there's enough paranoid bidders that Ebay has helped cultivate with their practices, that every time Phil shows up as an underbidder on a "higher end baseball" auction, and the other bidders do a simple click of the mouse, they see the guy they are bidding against has more retractions then they have won items on his record. Generally they either run to NET54 and wonder out loud if the guy they are bidding against is a shill (10 other guys jump on the bandwagon and say they will never do business with this seller again), or they don't say a word, and they temper their bidding accordingly.

It's not just this board either. I've ventured on Ebay buyer boards on occasion and they are littered with threads of people asking "Have I just been shilled". Sometimes they were shilled, but 90% of the time I believe it's a situation with a bidder like this in the mix..........but most don't want to hear that, usually it's the seller that gets demonized in the process, not the ones interfering with the auction.

Right now he has bid on 11 items in the last 30 days, he has 5 bid retractions in that same amount of time.

He has 93 retractions in the last 180 days. 93. That's not a "whoopsie". If he has the blessings of other sellers because of this, he's either building up his retractions, to scare other bidders away on the items he REALLY wants, or he's just inconvenienced 93 others sets of sellers and bidders on items he DIDN'T really want.

I really have a hard time believing there's some benevolent reason for this.

I personally care, because this type of bidding has become epidemic on the site. It affects the entire realm of collectibles and it affects bidder confidence in general.

I've spoken to more then one collector over the years who say they don't bid on Ebay anymore because of the shenanigans that they think go on there. Whether their fears are founded or unfounded doesn't really matter. The perception is there.

Well said. I am a small seller on Ebay. Not even a drop in the bucket compared to Probstein and PWCC. However, I do have one thing in common with those other two guys. I like to run .99 cent auctions. Not many sellers run .99 cent auctions anymore. That being said, I have to work alot harder to protect my auctions than those other two guys. All is takes is one bad bidder to wipe me off the map.

Others might not agree with me, but that is why I work so hard to ensure my auctions are clean from that kind of stuff. So yes, I block bid retractors. Not the ones who it is a true mistake where they entered the wrong bid. However, that is very seldom the reason. The current policy is being abused. I have retractors who are the high bidders, then three-four days later, decide they no longer want the item. They falsely use the tired old "can't contact the seller", or "entered the wrong amount". Those guys get blocked.