That might be fine for you, the seller, but it is infuriating for a buyer who is genuine and is outbid a few times by another person, only to have that other person retract a bid days later when the other bidder has walked away and left them in the lead and it is obvious they are not going to counter bid.

Why should the second higherst bidder then be held accountable, so long after the event? That's not fair. The price too, has soemtimes been artifically inflated by a non genuine bidder.

If you are outbid & that higher bid stays in place for over an hour, you should have the right to go elsewhere and look at other auctions, you shouldn't have to stick around for days watching the other auction, on the off chance.

I would be okay for ebay to allow retratcions at any time (which is exactly what they do, as long as it isn't in the final 12 hours) if they would also put something in place so that if there is no further bidding on the item after that, then the person who was second highest before the retraction is offered second chance, not upheld as winner.

Personally, I think it is too easy for people to retract bids, maybe if all they could do  was change the amount- enter a new bid amount that was higher than the winning bid, then it might make some pause before bidding. If they had to go through a rigmarole of asking a seller to issue a cancellation or else risk a strike, maybe they would put a hold on their trigger finger.