Originally Posted by
Undream
Bid retractions are very serious. E-bay keeps track of them, and on all my listings, I prevent people who have had more than a certain number of bid retractions over the last however many months from bidding on my items at all. There is an option for this when you list an item.
Here is a super evil scenario: You have your eye on an auction, and have bid on it, fairly high. You then use a phony e-bay account to artificially inflate the price, outbidding your first bid. Everyone else passes by the auction because it is priced too high. You then retract your phony bid before the auction ends, and win the item @ one bid increment over the 3rd highest bidder.
The main abuse of bid retractions, however, is by sellers. Shill bidding is a major problem. Sellers can use a phony bid to determine how high someones bid is, retract the phony bid, and use another account to bid $1 less than the bidder, so that the bidder pays absolute maximum price.
This can cost people a lot of $.
If you EVER need to cancel a bid for any reason, please CONTACT the sellers..do not do a retraction! Tell the seller the truth, and they will usually remove your bid for you, without any strikes going on your account history.