quote:When I withdrew the bid, a message came up to tell me that all MY bids on that item would be withdrawn. I have just checked the item and mysteriously, the item is now listed at the ORIGINAL starting price rather than the bid close to my maximum ....... hmmmmmm - very interesting ....... so was I bidding against myself?
No, I don't think you could have been bidding against yourself! I think that once you withdrew your bids (the eBay note said ALL your bids were removed, right?), then that would have included every one of them. That would then reset the bid amount based on the other bidder's (bidders' - if more than one) initial bids.
Example: Item starts at $1. You bid up to a max of $15. Another bidder bids up to a max of $12, so your bid becomes $13. You withdraw your bid, and ALL your bids are removed. The other bidder then is reset at $1, not $12, because the reason for his bid to be so high was based on your bidding participation.
I, as a seller, just had something like that happen to me a couple of weeks ago. Had an item selling for an initial price of $7.50. Two bidders ended up bumping it up to $32.50. Then one of the bidders became a "no longer a registered user of eBay" (I don't know why). Because all of the bids by that person were removed, the other bidder (who had met the opening price of $7.50 as the first bidder) was reset as the only bidder, and thus they were able to buy the item for $7.50. Had there been a total of 3 bidders, then the bids would have been reset based on the bids placed by those 2 bidders only. [boo, hoo, hoo.... I "lost" $25 on that sale....
]Hope that all makes sense.