Originally posted by TheOneAndOnlyJH On eBay you are making a contract to buy the item when you bid. Under certain circumstances you can retract your bid before the auction ends, but the seller can legally try to hold you to the sale once you win it. Even if they let you out, you are risking negative feedback and hurting your reputation. Becoming a repeat non-paying buyer may get your account closed or frozen.
I usually wait until the last day to place a bid in case a Buy-It-Now item or a better auction comes up. If you put in a bid 6 days early and something better comes along it's already too late. Retracting a bid is meant as a last resort, not routine. eg. if you bid $5025 when you meant to bid $50.25. (Yes, I've done it once or twice when missing a period on my phone, and I'm much more careful now.) If you must retract a bid for some reason, do it before the auction ends so that someone else has a chance to win without causing a hassle for you and the seller
I know that, and never did it, but in my financial situation and for in this specific situation, I don't care of 1 or 2 negative feedbacks, I'm currently 100% positive since 2005, I try to communicate as much as possible with the sellers to explain them why I can't buy the item I won, most of them can and will probably understand (one already did, just cancelled the transaction without leaving any feedback), and I'm ready to pay them some bucks for lost time. On the other hand, I've often been stolen on e-bay, people selling lenses full of fungus or with haze and not mentionning it, I consider these much more injuring this market place than just cancelling a won auction as a buyer. 2 sellers will loose 3 or 4 days, they'll just have to click on a button to put back their item for sale, and who knows, perhaps they'll sale it at a better price... I'm still waiting for a refund for a Vivitar with one lens in the middle optical block full of dead fungus, but I'm still waiting for this refund and don't expect much from this seller, I sent him a + feedback a bit too soon before fully testing the lens.
---------- Post added 11-30-15 at 08:27 PM ----------
In my situation, it was not a typing mistake in the maximum bid amount, but considering the items condtions I realy was not expecting to win these auctions without further bidings. On one item (the mint condition K-5) I've put my max bid at 360 euro and was sure it would have been sold for at least 400 euro, but it did not and I won it at exactly 360 euro... a first-hand K-5 bought in 2014 with only 1400 actuations, can't understand no one put more than 360 with only 10 euro shipping fees !
Last edited by bygp; 11-30-2015 at 08:30 PM.