ANOTHER ebay question. Sorry.

[elliemae1192]

I placed a proxy bid on an item and several minutes before the item ended, I was outbid. I decided not to bid again and went to pick my kids up from school. While I was out, I found the item I had bid on in a local store. I purchased it, brought it home and opened it. Now I'm looking at my ebay account and it says that I won the item. Apparently the other person retracted his bid just before the auction ended. Am I obligated to buy this now?

 

[tinaluis]

I thought bid retractions weren't allowed right before an auction ends. Have things changed on eBay?

 

[elliemae1192]

I'm not sure exactly how long before. All I know is there was about 20 min. left on the auction when I left and I had been outbid. When I got back, I had an e-mail with an outbid notice and a second e-mail saying I won because the other bid was retracted.

 

[DiscussDisney]

Here is ebay policy regarding timing of retractions. The way I am reading paragraph 3 is that if they placed their bid less than 12 hours they can retract within an hour....so if they placed the bid 5 minutes before auction ending, then can retract anytime before the auction ends? Am I right???

There are special rules about retracting bids, depending on when you originally placed the bid.

1) If you place a bid before the last 12-hours of the listing: You may retract that bid before that last 12-hours, if your situation meets the above description of exceptional circumstances. You will not be allowed to retract that bid during the last 12-hours of the listing.

2) When you retract a bid before the last 12 hours of a listing: you will eliminate all bids you have placed on that item. If you are correcting a bidding error, you will have to bid again.

3) If you place a bid during the last 12-hours of the listing: You may retract the bid only within one hour after placing the bid (and if your situation meets eBay's exceptional circumstances description).

4) When you retract a bid within the last 12 hours of the listing: You will eliminate only the most recent bid you placed. Bids you placed prior to the last 12 hours will not be retracted.

5) If you are not allowed to retract your bid during the last 12-hours of the listing, you may contact the seller to request that your bid be canceled. The seller will have the discretion whether to cancel your bid.

 

[luvthatdisney]

I might be mistaken, but I think a seller can "cancel" a bid at any time. Could this have been what happened?

I do think a bidder cannot retract a bid within 12 hours of the auction ending. I might be wrong on this, but I just had this situation come up - where I cancelled a bid (I was the seller).

Just check on ebay community boards - they are real helpful there! Please understand that if you place a bid and are outbid you may still win - ebay gives you these notices when you place a bid - I think most of us overlook these but - bids can be retracted and cancelled - please beware!

 

[elliemae1192]

looks like the bid was retracted 10 min before the auction ended.

 

[sb4k]

We had the same problem with some sports tickets. We had two auctions we were watching. We were outbid on one and won the other. Found out later that we had a bid retraction with 12 hours to go and was winning the other. And with sports tickets we're not talking cheap. We went through every channel to get our bid retracted but they said with 12 hours or less to go we couldn't retract our bid. Thankfully at the last minute we were outbid successfully but it cause quite the tension for a while. The person who outbid us and then retracted his bid was quite fishy also. You can look into some account info and we could tell that the person that retracted had never officially "won" an auction, so it lead us to wonder if that person was friends with the person selling and just bid up their items. Personally I'm getting sick of ebay. It's not the novelty it used to be. And as far as getting a live person to help you in time before the auction ends, forget it.

 

[elliemae1192]

Oh well, the auction was for a large 150 capacity cd or dvd storage case. I wanted to take all the jewel cases and put them up and have all the discs in one place. I guess I now own enough storage for 300 discs. Since I only have 71 dvds I guess I'd better go shopping.