Cancel Bid Policy?

[Julie]

Does anyone know if there's a policy in place regarding if a buyer contacts you during an auction asking you to cancel their bid?
Am I required, as a seller, to cancel the bid just because they request it?
Or can I tell them they need to retract it themselves?

Here's the story:
A recent buyer on one of my auctions was asking me a ton of questions regarding that item during the auction. I answered them & he continued to bid.
All of a sudden, about 15 hours left on it...I get an email:
'I really don't think this is going to work for me...blah, blah, blah'
I responded:
'If you really feel this item is not for you, please go thru ebay & retract/cancel your bid'
Never got anything back from him during the rest of the auction.
He ends up winning...so I invoice. Turns out he's in another country (Italy, I think) He emails again:
'I cannot go thru ebay to retire because I'm not in any case that allow you to retire my offer that are: <and he puts in the link from ebay on cancelling bids>. In fact I asked you to cancel the offer because it already happened to me without problem, so I' m sure that you could do the same.'
I could be reading that wrong, but it sounds to me like this guy has bid on other items & then asked that seller to cancel his bid.
My response was:
'If you did not want this item, you should have retracted your bid during the auction. However, you did bid and win this item, which enters you into a legal binding contract to purchase the item from me. If you do not purchase the item, I will be left with no choice but to file a non-paying bidder on you.'
He emailed back:
'This is not correct. In the options I could choose to retire my bid without lying, because my case was not within the admitted cases for retiring. You were the only one to have the choice to cancel my bid and you didn't, even when I explained you I cannot use your item here. I think my behaviour was completely correct and serious, but if you force to throw my money from the window I have to give you a bad feedback anyway.'
So now I'm being threatened with being left bad feedback!!

Am I in the wrong here? Should I have handled this differently? I don't know the policies on this type of thing, so...
Any & all advise is greatly appreciated!

 

[trees]

Well I really am not so smart on ebay policy, however if at any time a bidder shows in any way that they are unhappy with what they have done on their own, I would cancel all bids and block them as a buyer even if they do not request it........ If they are unhappy before they even win the bid you know how unhappy they will be once they have won.....................That way you know that particular buyer cant leave you a negative. Now that they have won the auction you might be in for it..... Good luck! I hope you all can settle this without bad feedbacks. ~trees~

I had a problem close to this one time and before the auction was over I contacted ebay and told them that a bidder was already unhappy and asked them what I should do to prevent getting a negative and they sent me the "to cancel bids" link.

 

[TGirl]

I always cancel there bid...even though it is a binding contract and they know that when they hit the submit button.....I still cancel it.....i either want them to come back at a different date to buy from me...or I don't want the bad feedback...cause obviously they were not happy that they bid.....uggggggggg

You can either relist the item and forget the feedback or take a chance.....I dunno.....

I had a guy that bought from me before, he was real nice and paid and left me positive feedback.... and he bid on a different auction at a different date and asked me to cancel it cuz he had family problems.....so I did cuz i want him to buy from me again some day......things happen...we all know that!

in your case seems this guy does it a lot......ugggggggggggggg I dunno

 

[kromsales]

Alot of them want you to cancel cause it shows on thier feedback page that they retracted bids. I wouldnt have cancelled it either. They just dont want the retraction showing.

 

[trees]

I would still rather cancel it and save them the retraction than to go on through with the sale just to get a negative anyway.......

 

[CHrt46]

I had a problem with a seller from Italy. It was so hard to communicate with her, and she left me negative feedback, although I didn't do anything wrong. Either this person doesn't know how Ebay works, or he is making excuses. I would file a non-payment with Ebay.