Below is an email from eBay to sellers today. It's one of those "oh look we did something without really doing anything" changes. They are making a tiny baby step towards weeding out all of the scammy buyers on eBay. Such a major issue in the card industry right now it's not even funny.
One of the big issues is people making bids on auctions, winning, and then asking to have the bid canceled. FOMO then triggering Buyers remorse. Sorry but a bid is supposed to be a legally binding agreement and there never should be an automatic way to have it retracted. You bid, you buy. Don't care if your Wife is going to kill you for buying another card, or your kid is ____ (they use all sorts of bs), or anything as you already knew your situation before putting in the bid.
Anyways below is the email and you will see I highlighted a major issue I have with this. The buyer can still not pay to get out of the buy which should cause their account to be suspended on the very first time IMO. Instead the seller is stuck waiting days to be able to resell the card and eBay clearly says Regularly missing payments MAY impact a buyer's account...REGULARLY should NEVER be an option, and MAY IMPACT...no how about you are booted from eBay for a year and when you return you must prepay before bidding for a year.
The community does not benefit at all from nonpaying buyers. Sellers miss out on sales. Buyers who would have purchased an item have it taken away from them and then must wait for the item to hopefully be relisted (many sellers just pull the item and sell elsewhere). Either way it was something neither the other legit buyers nor the seller should have to deal with.
In the end this might help stop a few of the issues, but only with those that made an honest mistake. Those that never planned to actually buy the item, but just had to be part of the action will continue with their nonsense as will most of those with Buyers Remorse. Guess baby steps is all anyone can expect...but I want more and it's why most of our business is not done on eBay.
Based on feedback from our Trading Cards seller community, we are 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 the seller’s approval. Sellers may accept or reject auction bid retraction requests at their sole discretion, however, we encourage sellers to use their best judgment and give buyers the benefit of the doubt. Sellers who decline bid retraction requests will not be subject to any consequences and buyers will have the ability to appeal, but please keep in mind that honest mistakes happen.
We expect the change will significantly reduce the percentage of auction bids retracted by buyers.
How the new auction bid retraction policy will work
Starting June 30, if a Trading Card buyer wishes to retract an auction bid, they will need to contact the seller via messaging on eBay to request a retraction. The seller will, at their sole discretion, be able to accept or reject the buyer’s retraction request. If the seller does not accept the request, the buyer’s auction bid can still win or lose the auction, and they will be accountable for the outcome. As noted at the bottom of the auction listing: “You can only retract your bid under certain circumstances.” Buyers are also informed on the ‘Retract a Bid ’ that “a bid is a binding contract.”
As of April 2021, if an item goes unpaid by the 5th calendar day, you may cancel the order due to non-payment. Regularly missing payments may impact a buyer’s account. Check out our Unpaid Item Policy to learn more.
