Bidder evidently bid under username melissa5224. I cannot tell for sure, because the same day she bid, she closed that account, or transferred it to a new username - melbowers5830. The starting bid was $69. Twenty minutes after she bid, I received the following email: "I am sorry but there has been a horrible mistake. I did not bid on this item. Perhaps my acc't has been hacked. But I have never bought art on Ebay. There are days left on this item but I wanted to give you advance notice that this is not a valid bid. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Melissa"

My response (and I highly recommend sellers take this approach) was to say, "Ok, well, you can cancel your bid." You made a mistake or are a victim of identity theft, no problem, take care of the situation, then. It's not on me to take action, is my feeling about this type of thing. I sent three subsequent messages over the course of a week to her, indicating that I was waiting for her to cancel her bid. On my third follow-up, I made it clear I would let the auction run its course and then leave negative feedback if she did not take care of it herself.

Finally, that last response motivated a reaction the same day. She said she did not know how to cancel her bid, but within the time that I was drafting a final follow-up, she figured it out. It's not hard! There actually is zero argument I can think of for asking, or expecting a seller to do it through passivity. So, here is the crux - she had bidded the auction up to $75. Which means she was putting a maximum bid on there and possibly outbidding underbidders, then maybe (?) had buyer's remorse. Her reason logged with eBay for canceling: "Entered wrong amount."

The premise that she was hacked makes no sense. Who wold bother? A disgruntled ex? Would the hacker have changed her ship-to address? Would they have camped out for three days near her mailbox to intercept the package? She seems completely full of shit, and I called her out on it. The piece had four other watchers, so I feel totally vindicated.