Locked
Discussions in this board are limited to the original poster and Community Mentors
Is this bad community practices? If so, how best to report?
Last week on 7/4 I made a seller an offer for an item. The item in question was listed with a starting bid of $10. I made an offer for $25 as it was an item I really wanted.
The seller automatically declined my $25 offer. So I went ahead and just put in the minimum bid of $10 on 7/5.
The auction ended and I ended up winning the auction anyway for $10 and quickly paid. Fast forward 5 days with no response from the seller and they up and cancelled the order, issued a refund stating "I'm out of stock or the item is damaged."
To me this seems like not best community practices. They're circumventing listing fees by not setting a proper reserve or minimum bid price and then just cancelling the order when it didn't sell for as much as they hoped. I looked around and am not seeing the same listing on other sites (yet) so I don't know if they were double dipping or if he's just gonna re-list the same item in a few days.
I'd also argue he was price gouging on shipping, charging $37 for something that clearly wouldn't cost that much to ship. I was willing to eat it though to get the item - it was an older toy that's not available anymore.
Seems like it's impossible to get a live response from eBay these days as everything is AI in the Help sub. I attempted to report this using their form but got an autogenerated response within minutes stating they didn't find anything problematic with the listing. But this doesn't seem like something AI can evaluate.
I've not made an attempt to contact the seller or left any Feedback yet - because the practice seems so shady to me, I'm not sure any good will come of that.
evry1nositswindy
Mentor1 year agoIf you hadn't made the offer and then won it for $10, he/she might not have cancelled. Maybe they thought someone else might pay more for it. Doesn't make this right, but trust me, the seller was punished and the defect stays on their account for a year.
fridaynightarcade
OP1 year agoFair, but the offer was automatically declined - as if they had set a minimum amount ahead of time on Best Offer to be automatically declined. That's when I went ahead and put a bid in. Eh well.
selforfun
Mentor1 year agoHi @fridaynightarcade
As mentioned by @dryophelia this kind of behavior is considered bad practice on eBay. The seller canceled your order after you fairly won the auction, likely because they didn’t want to sell at that price. That’s against eBay’s policy. When a seller cancels an order using "out of stock or damaged" as the reason, they automatically receive a defect on their seller account, and they also lose the final value fee they paid to eBay for that sale.
If you believe the seller is doing this repeatedly or manipulating the process, you can report it here:
https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/resolving-issues-sellers/report-issue-seller?id=4022
Also, if you suspect the seller was raising the price by placing fake bids to avoid selling it cheap (called shill bidding), that is a serious violation of eBay policy and can lead to account suspension:
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-practices-policy/shill-bidding-policy?id=4353
Leaving honest feedback is your right. It also helps other buyers be aware.
Just to note, offering more than the starting bid can sometimes confuse or spook sellers, especially if there's no Buy It Now option. But none of that excuses canceling a legitimate winning bid
fridaynightarcade
OP1 year agoThank you for your response.
I'd think given my feedback score, there wouldn't be anything to be spooked about on the seller's end when I offered a high amount. And as mentioned above, that offer was automatically declined meaning he had set it to decline any offers at least $25 and under on his end.
But again, the minimum bid was $10 and no one else had even bid yet. After he declined my Best Offer of $25, I just went ahead and bid anyway since it was ending within 18 hours. Then I won the auction on that solo $10 bid - no one else bid and he wasn't doing any shilling.
Then 5 days went by after I immediately paid and he cancelled the order.
I did message the seller today and got this response:
Me: Is the item really "not in stock or damaged" or were you just hoping to sell it for more?
Seller: We miss placed the box and I have not been able to find it. When I find it I will do the same price just didn’t want to tie money up . Also We are going on vacation Saturday so I had to do the refund at this point . I apologize i
That's the actual message - it just ends there lol.
I attempted to go through the reporting process but just kept getting automatically rolled back to Help articles or "just contact the seller" because eBay seems to be entirely run by AI these days. I'm not going to bother leaving feedback, will just not do business with that seller again. They may be telling the truth, have decent feedback, but just seems shady.
Thanks for taking the time to respond though and for the helpful links. Cheers.
dryophelia
Mentor1 year ago@fridaynightarcade
There isn’t anything to report. The seller received a defect for cancelling. They also forfeit the fees they paid to eBay for the sale.
You can leave feedback.
Just sayin’ …
It is not common, and may even spook a seller, to offer more than the BIN price.
fridaynightarcade
OP1 year agoThank you for your response.
There was no BIN or I would have just purchased outright.
It was a $10 minimum auction or Best Offer. I made a reasonable offer above the auction price which was auto-declined. That indicates he had set a higher price behind the scenes on the Best Offer option but did not utilize Reserve Price or just start the auction at the minimum amount he was willing to sell for.
Then when he realized it was going to only sell for $10 after I won the auction outright, he cancelled the order.