WARNING Do not buy from

[captainjefferyspaulding]

I won an auction from this seller with the minimum starting bid. Before I had a chance to pay, he canceled the sale claiming that I had requested the cancellation. Now he has re-posted the same item but with a minimum bid 4x what it was previously. The fact that he had zero feedback as a seller should have been a clue, but I simply didn't notice.  When I notified him that I had NOT requested a cancellation, he first claimed that the item was damaged, then that he had lost it. Don't be taken in. 

[woodland_gnome]

The seller should have automatically gotten a "defect" when s/he cancelled the transaction, but the lie s/he told blamed you and avoided that. "Defects" are the primary tool eBay uses to weed out bad sellers, downgrading the selling status of those who get too many relative to their sales volume (as opposed to having to pay employees to actually investigate to see how likely it was that the seller had a legitimate reason to cancel vs. deliberate policy violations).

Report the lie at https://www.ebay.com/help/action?topicId=4850 I don't know if eBay will do anything about it (give the seller the defect s/he should have gotten if s/he had taken the blame him/herself, keep the cancellation blaming you from counting toward your Open Transaction Limits) but it's relatively easy to do it that way.

It is against the rules of these forums to "name and shame" ("Do not buy from") another user.  That is what feedback is for (for sellers anyway, buyers can't get bad feedback).   You may leave appropriate (calm, factual--if the seller said that x was the reason say "seller said x. . ." so people don't think you are just jumping to conclusions) feedback to warn future buyers/bidders. If the usual links have vanished, go to anyone's Feedback Profile (doesn't matter who, click on the feedback score in parentheses behind the username) then scroll down to below the last comment on that page to find a "Leave feedback" link that doesn't vanish (it brings you to a list of items you can leave feedback for).

Theoretically you could sue the seller for breach of the contract of sale (for the difference between the auction price and what you ended up having to pay for a replacement), but that is almost never practical.