HA allows bidders to retract their bids?
 

I have been tracking a few items on HA signature auction. I just realized one of the lots has a bid lower than yesterday. I guess someone might have called HA and retracted his recent bid. Are there any other auction houses out there allow bidders to retract their bids?

Well, Heritage does clearly allow house bidding per it's auction terms and conditions. Maybe the house simply decided that it wanted to actually sell the item rather than bid up potential [non-Heritage] bidders and risk being stuck with the item.

Jim there are times where bid retraction makes sense. Somebody suddenly loses their job and all of the sudden that baseball card that was bid on is not so high on their priority list. If that person was the high bidder they would not pay for the item anyways. I think bid retraction should be used very carefully as it could be misused easily.

I agree that there are legitimate reasons for bid retraction. Unfortunately for Heritage, their other bidding practices make even legitimate actions look suspicious.

I understand house bidding does muddy the water.

Ebay is infested with several serial bid retractors.

I've run across a few in the last several months after they cancelled bids in my auctions. Checked their history and they'll have almost as many bid retractions as items bid on.

Went and looked at their history. Seems there's a bunch of guys out there who like to put in bids, just to see the topping bid and then immediately retract it. I'd end up blocking these clowns.

I wish Ebay would put serious limits on retracting bids. Not only would it cut down on shilling, but would help curb this suddenly popular habit of retracting bids as a bidding strategy and making sellers look like the a-holes.

Some will probably suggest, it's not against Ebay rules and they don't seem to want to do anything to curb it, so it's a perfectly legal bidding strategy..........though most of it just looks like screwing around or satisfying ones curiousity.

In reality, serial retractors are doing one of two things. Shilling on auctions or interfering with them............there's no two ways around it.

I prefer to call it shill bidding myself, but hey that's just me.

Well stated. I also do not like bid retractions that happen just before an auction close. I feel that is an attempt at price control.

I agree with Dave about bid retracting on ebay. Every time I see a bid retracted I always check to see the reason why, and it's always the same thing: entered wrong amount. And of course that bidder didn't enter the wrong amount at all, it's just an easy out for something more insidious going on.

I don't understand all of this: ebay at one time had a strict policy restricting the number of bid retractions a buyer could make in a one month period but it appears that rule slowly faded in to the sunset. I believe the total limit of retractions a bidder could make without jeopardizing his/her account was 2.
Apparently with "buyer friendly" ebay now, the restriction no longer exists?