We’re updating our bid retraction policy for Sports Trading Cards, Non-Sports Trading Cards, and Collectible Card Games auctions. Starting June 30, 2021, buyers will no longer have the ability to retract bids on trading cards auctions without seller approval. Sellers’ decisions to accept or reject auction bid retraction requests will be final.
How the new auction bid retraction policy will work
Starting June 30, if you want to retract an auction bid, you will need to contact the seller via messaging on eBay and request a retraction. The seller, at their sole discretion, will be able to accept or decline your retraction request. If the seller does not accept your request, your bid can still win or lose the auction, and you will be required to make payment on any winning bid you submit. We also inform buyers on our “Bid Retraction Policy” page that “a bid is a binding contract.”
As previously communicated, as of April 2021, if an item goes unpaid by the 5th calendar day, the seller may cancel the order due to non-payment. Regularly missing payments may impact your account. Check out our Unpaid Item Policy to learn more.
We appreciate your support and willingness to work with this new policy as we anticipate our trading cards policy update will make eBay a more trusted and fairer marketplace for all.
As always, thank you for buying on eBay.
The eBay Team
I think the idea is to increase the number of unpaid strikes for non-paying buyers. In a macro sense that should weed out the worst offenders/shills over time, but on on ongoing basis it may contribute to more unpaid auctions if you as the seller miss the cancel request.
I guess if you get into the nuance, there could be a benefit to seller controlling bid retraction. Especially if the person’s bid is expected to be exceeded. Being able to deny retraction may help with auction momentum/competition.
If there’s a European/German eBay store that can confirm or explain how just last month here they started allowing of buyers to cancel an auction within 1 hr of winning without risking an unpaid item case (can confirm since they wouldn’t let me open one), I’d be very thankful
I don’t list often as auction, but I see this as only a benefit, or at the very least, a step in the right direction. It may lead to us having to deal with more of the “My kid bid on this item” stuff directly, though… That’s really the only drawback I see. And at the very least, it shows that ebay is thinking about the issue and trying to do something. Hopefully we will end up with a good number of bad accounts getting banned.
This new eBay policy is sadly misguided. I’m an entrepreneur who works from home, and my one year old son Hustlurr is constantly stealing my credit cards to use as a chew toy. On average he places a dozen eBay bids a day that I have to retract. Clearly no one at eBay considered my difficulties.
It is so discouraging to bid on any auction when the other bidders have multiple bid retractions, and it is way too common in my experience. I have seen people with 100+ retractions, and I seriously wonder why any legit person would even have one bid retraction. Making bid retractions more tedious to do seems great, but it would be better if eBay would outright ban people permanently with a history of multiple bid retractions.
