To all of you who have responded, graciously or otherwise, to my recent post about the alleged 'shil bidding' incident I am involved with on Ebay, I am providing a further clarification but do not wish to needlessly drag this out or waste valuable FML space which could be used for more significant posts. I feel no need to defend myself or my actions as my concerns have been validated by several others as well as the Ebay staff. Furthermore, I have made NO references whatsoever toward the CHARACTER OR INTENT of the seller and/or buyer so therefore neither slander nor maliciousnes applies. I have merely presented information about an incident involving me, the seller, and buyer and I also made it very clear in my previous post that readers were free to do whatever they wished with the information I provided AND that I was NOT telling anyone NOT to buy from this seller. I was told that the buyer in question (fiveloves) had her Ebay account suspended without any warning whatsoever, causing her bids to be retracted automatically, and has not received any responses at all yet from Ebay as to why this happened. I, on the other hand, have received 4 reponses from Ebay personnel in the past 48 hrs. so I'm genuinely confused about the lack of disconnect between Fiveloves and Ebay. I am a responsible and upstanding person and Ebay buyer and I purposely stopped bidding on the items in question when I knew I had reached my financial limit and also decided that the bid was higher than what I was willing to pay. Now however, because the buyer who forced the price up so high suddenly had her bids retracted, I am now the highest bidder and am forced to pay for items I no longer wish to have - with money I have already allocated toward other things! (If any of you were in this position, I'm sure you would share similar concerns!) But I WILL honor MY bids, despite these circumstances, although feel it is a very unjust that if I ask for a bid retraction, it will reflect negatively on MY account and make it appear as if I am not a reputable buyer (which is definitely NOT true and the comments in my Ebay profile support this!) Below is word-for-word exerpts from the email letter I received from Ebay personnel, in response to my complaint(s). Mind you, this is not a standard generic form letter issued to me to justify their statement of a 'timely reply' because the letter contains some specific information about my complaint that a standard form letter could not generate. FROM EBAY: "Thank you for taking the time to write to eBay's Safe Harbor department. We have previously been alerted to possible shill bidding activity and other unethical business practices involving the accounts listed in your complaint and therefore a further investigation is now pending. ... Shill bidding is a serious offense and we assure you that we will thoroughly examine your report as soon as possible, usually within 24 hours. Please keep in mind that due to our privacy policy you will not receive specific details of our actions but will be informed of the outcome of our decision... ... Should you have any other questions or concerns, we ask that you do not contact the accounts listed in your complaint but direct all inquiries to ebay's Safe Harbor department until the matter is resolved. Regards, The eBay Safe Harbor Team" [Posted in FML issue 4668]