"Obviously, the lesser bidders would not expect to have a completed contract. There is, however, nothing in the bidding notice which suggests that the seller can cancel the bids and withdraw the auction. There is no way for bidders to know, without going into the rules for sellers (which most bidders are not going to bother doing) that sellers can cancel an auction for any (or no) reason at all."

BTW Jim, as I pointed out to Mike in private email, the USER AGREEMENT (which by its own terms is the sole agreement between users and Ebay) specifies that a auction which has received a bid may not be cancelled except in limited circumstances. The alleged rules which Mike cites as allowing the bid to be cancelled for any reason are not part of the USER AGREEMENT and as they are completely opposite with the actual USER AGREEMENT they can not actually be considered a valid interpretation of the rules set forth in the USER AGREEMENT.