How do I withdraw a bid I made on Ebay before close date of auction?

September 7, 2013 12:14 PM

Made bid fairly close to announced price, though a very little lower. Close of bidding not yet taken place. Now I find I can get same item elsewhere and with less costs and trouble. How do I officially take back my bid. Or do I simply not pay for item if I win it?
posted by Postroad to Shopping (9 answers total)

From eBay's site:

As a general rule, you can't retract, remove, or cancel a bid. When you place a bid, you agree to pay for the item if you're the winning bidder.

More at the link.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 12:19 PM on September 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

You can't, at least not without breaking your contract with both eBay and the seller. You've made a binding promise to buy the item, and now you're contractually obligated to keep your promise. If you're okay with breaking the contract, you can, of course, simply not pay. However, be aware that if you do so, you may get kicked off of eBay. Theoretically, the seller could come after you legally for breach of contract, but I doubt that would happen.
posted by decathecting at 12:26 PM on September 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

A friend of mine in a similar situation contacted the seller directly and as politely as possible asked to rescind the bid. The seller very graciously did so and my friend got out of the transaction with only a small blemish on their buyer ratings history.
posted by carsonb at 12:33 PM on September 7, 2013

Response by poster: thanks. the amount is rather small so that I will ask the seller and eat the loss if he refuses.
posted by Postroad at 12:52 PM on September 7, 2013

As former eBay seller who had someone do this to me (and just refuse to buy item... just before Christmas and I didn't have the time to relist the item before Christmas). Don't do it. It sucks when people do this.
posted by jujulalia at 1:01 PM on September 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

Read the link that Conrad Cornelius posted.

You CAN retract a bid, though not for the reason you stated. It is actually quite easy using the bid retraction form.

As a seller, I see people do it on my auctions all the time. It's not worth my time to argue that it is incredibly unlikely they "accidentally" bid a few dollars more than someone else as a result of misplacing the decimal point.

Yes, it's a dick move to retract, but it's also pretty easy.
posted by MonsieurBon at 1:03 PM on September 7, 2013

If you bid $10,000 on an item that's worth $10 it can be shown as a mistake and that's understandable. Otherwise it is a breach of contract when you retract a bid for any reason other than that. Don't be a douche (with all due respect....). I am an eBay seller and it really sucks when people waste my time. If you win... pay.
posted by brownrd at 1:28 PM on September 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?RetractBidShow

People retract bids all the time. It does happen. Don't make a habit of it. You can't do it if you have less than 12 hours or something like that.
posted by Slinga at 4:24 PM on September 7, 2013

Don't do the "not paying" route:

1. It's dishonest, and it sucks for the seller. And for whomever might have bought the item.

2. As others mention, it's a violation of eBay's terms, and it can be a pain. I had to go through a lot of trouble a few months ago when I had an unintended unpaid item (seller had a blocked Paypal account, and was non-responsive to contact efforts, so I was unable to pay him). Took a rather large amount of effort to get that cleared up.

If you are within the window to retract a bid, see if you can do it. Otherwise, suck it up.
posted by kaszeta at 3:05 AM on September 8, 2013