Genuine question about ebay bid retractions

[bn2cardz]

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.