Hi Perry,

Thank you for getting in touch.

I'm afraid that if you do not win an auction, you will not automatically get the bids back to your account. You do however have the option to use Buy it Now!

With the Buy it Now option you simply pay the normal price, and not only do you receive the item, you get all your bids back from the auction. Users who take advantage of this option usually have a better experience, since they both get the item they initially wanted as well as retain all their bids.

If you don't want to use Buy it Now, you will unfortunately lose the bids. We recommend our users to bid on items they really want so that if they lose the auction, they can still get the item and their bids back.

Hope this helps! Let us know if there's anything else we can do for you, it would be our pleasure.