Recently I wanted to BIN an auction. But the widget was quite expensive and I didn't have the cash in my checking account to do so at that point. So I put in a min bid to kill the BIN and waited. My original intention was to snipe the widget using another ID. A few days went by then a check I was waiting on cleared so I could afford to BIN the widget. But of course the BIN had gone. There were no other bidders but I KNEW there would be others bidding on this widget at the end because it was very desirable. It could easily have gone way up over the BIN price.
Asking the seller to cancel is risky because there can be a gap between them cancelling & the BIN returning and you finding out about this. In the gap another bidder could sneak in and BIN it. I didn't want this to happen.
Anyway I have 2 domains and can set up to 50 e-mail addys on each, so there are plenty of IDs I can set up on eBay. I could afford to have a retraction on the record for one of the IDs (the one I had used to bid) so I retracted the bid and then used another to BIN the widget.
A lot of people would say this is unfair - like reserving the item for yourself until you are ready to pay for it. But that's how the rules work and they are there to be manipulated. The seller was no worse off financially and was not aware of what I had done. All she knew was that I BINned the item and paid her by Paypal later that day.
You may care to remember this tactic if you have more than one eBay id and you are waiting on say your pay to get into the bank. Of course, you have to be prepared to have a retraction on one of your IDs so I would advocate this only to be used if, like me, you can create plenty of IDs. Or for very special widgets that you MUST have.
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