Seller wants me reverse payment for auction I won for seemingly no reason

[josba41]

Hi ebay community,

I recently won a reserve auction and was met with a strange situation from the seller after he messaged me the next day with the following.

 "Apologies but unfortunately this item was not authenticated. Our reputation is in selling only authentic merchandise and will not sell you a fake or repica. Please send me a request to cancel the order to reverse the payment. "

This message from the seller seems a bit odd. It seems to me the seller was unhappy with the sale price of the item and made up some excuse about it not being authenticated to scare me into canceling the order. If the seller is so concerned about their reputation, why don't they mention weather it's authenticated in the description. Either way, when i bid on the item, I accepted the risk regardless of weather or not it was authenticated. Is asking the buyer to reverse the payment after winning a violation of ebay tos? Thanks for reading, your answers are very much appreciated.

[r_lresale]

The only thing I can think of is they don't have the item  or it is broken or something. In any event if a seller cancels for any reason other than buyer asked/problem with buyers adress they get a defect for doing so. If you request the cancellation they can "ethically" choose that reason. 

What kind of feedback does the seller have? If you care to share the item number  someone here might be able to give you a best guess lol.

[44012]

Sellers have the ability to cancel an order and refund you. They do not need YOU to cancel the order first to refund. The seller gets a defect as mentioned above. This defect can be serious depending on how many defects they may already have which may be why they are asking you to cancel which would not give them the defect.

[mudshark61369 · Accepted solution]

@josba41,

The seller is trying to pull a fast one on you.  If you request cancellation of the item, they get away with not completing the transaction with no consequences.  Your reply to the seller's message should be:

"I expect to receive the item I ordered within the delivery time frame shown on the order details page".

Do not say anything about a refund or they could claim you wanted to cancel the transaction. After that do not respond to messages from them. You will have to wait until the last estimated delivery date has passed by 1 day, before you can file an Item Not Received dispute, if they do not ship the item. 

In the future I strongly suggest that you check the feedback profile pages of each seller you intend to buy from, before bidding on or buying their items.  You can access a seller's feedback profile page from near the bottom of listing pages. Use the See All Feedback  button below where their name is in a large font.  On the profile page if the seller has received neutral or negative feedback, click on the numbers of them to read only those comments. Never go by a feedback percentage alone.  You also want to look at the item titles of what they have sold.  If the feedback they've received or left, do not have an item titles but says Private listing, that should always be a warning.   If this were me I would immediately leave them a negative feedback stating what they have tried to do.  Do not call them names just stick to the facts.  If they contact you after that saying they can't refund unless you change the feedback, ignore it until you can file a dispute.