Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Gunbroker - bid retraction?

I was checking on this auction that I had bid on at Gunbroker.com - I thought I should have received notification of whether I had won or lost by now. I logged in and found that the auction was stopped with an admin bid retraction. Has anyone else ever experienced this? Does it mean the seller decided not to sell or was something else wrong? I spent half and hour trying to find an explanation on all the FAQs and the Knowledge base, etc., to no avail. Not sure if I want to bid on anything else from the seller or if he is also wondering what happened. Odessa

http://gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=103689075

seller probably stopped the auction. i think that seller did the same thing to me once but i cant remember.
i'm not sure how it works when you stop an auction with bids, i've only done it to my auctions if they dont have any bids.

Some sellers have the rifle listed several internet places and/or at a shop, then cancel bidding when it is sold.

Bruce

that's kinda lame.

I think it is pretty common on Gunbroker. A description search for "cancel" found 12246 auctions.


We reserve the right to cancel an auction if one of our New Mexico customers purchases the firearm before an auction bid is received. If there is a GunBroker auction bid, we will not cancel the auction and the successful bidder will get the firearm.
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=105056084

We reserve the right to cancel this auction at any time.
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=104648771

Many of my items are for sale offline as well, in the event your item is on backorder, you'll be contacted immedeatley and given the option to wait or get a refund/cancel sale, this is a very rare occurance, but it has happened
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=104511107

We reserve the right to end auction at ANY time and NOT sell to high bidder unless reserve is met, so bid accordingly - we might sell it locally.
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=104516989


This firearm is being shown in our retail storefront also. We reserve the right to cancel this auction should the firearm sell from the store before the auction ends.
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=104513493

It's slightly shaky to offer an item in more than one place at the same time. It's very unethical to sell it in your store once it's been bid on.

I'd contact the seller and politely ask for an explanation.

I agree.

I can see a dealer listing items in stock for sale but once you've got a live offer ethics would seem to dictate first-come-first-served.

It'd be akin to promising to hold an item for me to pick up on the way home from work and then I show up to find out he got a better offer in the interim and sold it out from under me.
Not a good chance of repeat business that way....

I had this happen to me once with Ebay and Ebay finally sent me an email saying that one of the people that was bidding on the item had his account hacked so Ebay shut the auction down. Not saying that this is what happened on gunbroker but it might be a possibility.

Thanks for the explanations. I don't use GunBroker (or Auction Arms) that much - one reason being the unwillingness of sellers to leave feedback. On GunBroker I have probably bought 10-12 items and only have feedback on five (some auctions require a certain amount of positive feedback to participate) on Auction Arms I have bought another 8-9 items and have no feedback at all. On this auction I tried to contact the seller to find out what happened (being as they showed no courtesy in e-mailing about me to inform me the auction had ended) but their system will only let you send an internal email if the auction is active; once over the system will not send your message. If the seller doesn't list his contact info you cannot communicate. I will be very picky about who I bid with in the future. Odessa

I always leave feedback, unfortunately not all buyers do. Right now we still have 100% positive feedback after 5 years of selling on Auction Arms.
I use this disclaimer on my auctions however, I/we will pull an item off the shelf once we have a bid on it, sometimes one will get sold before I let the shop know I have a bid though:
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING BEFORE BIDDING:


WE WISH TO MAKE CLEAR TO POTENTIAL BUYERS THAT ALL ITEMS, ARE SOLD AS/IS.
We do our best to describe each item accurately, pointing out all known flaws, if any exist. It is the responsibility of the buyer to thoroughly read the description and to look at all the pictures. We ask that buyers accept the responsibility of their purchase.
We NEVER want to mislead anyone with our descriptions. If there are any questions at all, we would hope you would ask them before bidding. We welcome any and all questions and will try to respond promptly. We want our buyers to be HAPPY with their purchase.
ALL FEDERAL, STATE and LOCAL firearm laws apply. FLORIDA RESIDENTS MUST PAY SALES TAX!

ALL FIREARMS AND/OR RECEIVERS WILL BE SHIPPED TO A LICENSED FEDERAL FIREARMS DEALER ONLY.
NO APO/FPO OR FOREIGN ADDRESSES.

SIGNED FFL REQUIRED VIA US MAIL BEFORE SHIPPING.
$25.00 shipping, handling and insurance on all firearm sales unless otherwise noted.
Payment must be received within 10 days of notification of successful bid or we will post negative feedback and re-list item.

We are a legitimate store front FFL dealer Located in Port Charlotte, FL.

We take Visa, Mastercard, Discover, USPS Money orders & Certified bank funds only.
NO MICKEY MOUSE CREDIT CARD FEES.
When calling with a credit card we will need a hard or fax copy of the receiving dealers FFL before we will ship.
Buyer responsible for all transfer fees and taxes charged by their receiving dealer.

RETURNS SUBJECT TO REFUND OF SELLING PRICE ONLY.

FIREARM MUST NOT HAVE BEEN FIRED OR DISASSEMBLED AND MUST BE RETURNED IN ORIGINAL PACKAGING POSTMARKED WITHIN 3 BUSINESS DAYS OF DELIVERY CONFIRMATION.

ALL SHIPPING CHARGES ARE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE
BUYER.

All listed items subject to prior sale at our retail store.

GOOD LUCK and GOOD BIDDING!