Seller not responding after cancelling item won in auction, or after item won in relisted bidding

[drfitzg_51]

Two weeks ago, I bid on a pair of Jordans. I won the auction, but did not have sufficient funds to pay for the item immediately.  The seller reached out to me and asked when he could expect payment, and I told him that I would have the payment sent within the next 2 days. I sent the payment within the next 24 hours. However, the seller did not ship the item for another 2 days, and did not answer any inquiries, but printed a shipping label, then immediately cancelled the item, refunded all my money, and relisted the item. The reason for cancellation was listed as 'shipping address issue'

 I have ordered in the past, and have not moved. I have also ordered products with the same address since, and have had no problem. I reached out to him and inquired about the problem, and was met with silence.

So I decided to wait a week and bid on the relisted item. After a week, the auction ended and I won the item again. This time, I had the payment available immediately and left my end of the bargain waterproof. I even asked if there was any help he needed with shipping that could be cleared up on my end.

I do not want to cancel this order; I would prefer to have it despite the trouble I have encountered. Do you have any advice for what to do? Is the ball in my court, or is the seller at fault here?

[mtgraves7984]

Is the ball in my court, or is the seller at fault here?

@drfitzg_51 

The ball is in your court now... the seller was at fault for cancelling your 1st order using 'Problem with buyer's address'.

[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.

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.

[soh.maryl]

In the future, you might want to make sure you have funds available before buying or bidding.  

[safan80]

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The ebay system doesn't do anything to weed out bad sellers. Ebay policies are rarely enforced thus making them useless.
 @drfitzg_51 The only thing you can do is contact ebay live support and report the seller. They will also give you a link that you can save. Yo7u can also watch the seller's listing on a daily basis and report the listing each time he relists the item. When i had a similar problem 3 month went by. You can also leave him negative feedback on the listing he cancelled. There's an alternate method for accessing the feedback system so you can leave feedback on cancelled orders that you have to find the link for which is something I don't have saved on this computer.

@woodland_gnome wrote:

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).

[albertabrightalberta]

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@soh.maryl wrote:

In the future, you might want to make sure you have funds available before buying or bidding.  

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But in this case, the buyer did nothing wrong. If the item wasn't BIN/IPR, the buyer had 4 days to make payment. It sounds like he made payment in 2 days. If it had been beyond 4 days, the seller certainly would have canceled for non-payment and wouldn't have to lie about the reason for cancellation. 

@drfitzg_51 

There was likely no problem with your address the first time and there's nothing to "help" the seller with this time. 

[drfitzg_51]

Update: Seller responded on Thursday, apologized for the inconvenience, said there was an issue getting a shipping label through Ebay, and claimed the item would be shipped soon. Three days later, it still hasn't even had an order number assigned to it.

I understand that USPS packages don't ship over the weekend, but if Tuesday rolls around and nothing has happened, what should I do?

[soh.maryl]

Have you read eBay's Money Back Guarantee for buyers?

In the listing where you made your purchase, you saw an estimated delivery date.

Once that date has passed by one day, you have 30 days to open an item not received case with eBay.