So I was just looking through some ebay auctions and came across an auction I was interested in. The current price was 9.99 and it had one bid. I wanted to enter 10.52, but I accidentally entered 1,052. I hadn't ever made a mistake like that before so I got pretty scared. I searched on how to retract a bid and it turns out that the process is pretty simple - just enter the item number in a form and choose why you are retracting the bid and it cancels your bids on the item automatically. The interesting thing I figured out was when I had bid the 1,052 it had upped the bid to 11.02, and I was the highest bidder. When I retracted my bid it went back down to 9.99, but now I know exactly where the bidders max bid is at. I don't plan on ever doing that, but I'm sure that could be useful to someone. Has anybody done that before?
Bid retractions are recorded and are visible to anyone in the feedback rating, so I don't think you could get away with it forever Mike
Yeah, I know a couple sellers that will ban people from their auctions if they retract bids too frequently.
From eBay's policy on bid retraction: "You're not allowed to retract bids to manipulate the bidding process, like trying to find out the maximum bid of the current high bidder..." You can retract if you enter the wrong amount... but don't do it too often (as stated above). Here's the policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/invalid-bid-retraction.html
Ebay only allows a certain amount of bid retractions. And they all must have a legit reason. Unless you did something drastic by accident like what you did, don't retract a bid.
No, but, was there ever a chance that the coin would bid up to $1,052? If not, then no sweat. If nothing more, you would have assured yourself as being the high bidder in that auction.
Infantessimal chance someone else drops the decimal and you both get a pucker factor like never before! I've gotten a second chance bid because the winner told the seller his child bid and it was unintentional. You could always come up with some excuse for not paying, but you'd have to expect negative feedback.
Ebay says that but there are people out there that have dozens if not hundreds of retractions on their record and eBay does nothing about them. It's a common trick of sellers that shill bid. Use one acount to run up the auction until they find the bidders max, retract and then they can use another account to bid just below that amount.
