My seller cancelled my order

Question

Can someone tell me how to make a complaint??? I won a bid as I was headed out of town for camping on Friday. I planned to pay for it when I got back in town and had service Monday morning. Not but 30 minutes after I got back in town Sunday evening, the seller cancels my order with the reason "buyer requests cancelation" or something like that. I did not!!! I even had until Tuesday to pay before they were allowed to cancel. I have messaged the seller twice and they won't respond. I'm so upset!!

woodland_gnome · Answer

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.

tree*fern · Answer

Hi @melash-816 The seller is required to allow you up to 4 days for payment on auctions. They are not allowed to falsely say you requested cancellation. EBay penalizes sellers for cancelling unless the buyer asked or there's a shipping address problem, so the seller did this to avoid the penalty.

You can report the seller to eBay for violating policies:
https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/resolving-issues-sellers/report-issue-seller?id=4022

You can also leave appropriate feedback:
https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/leaving-feedback-sellers/leaving-feedback-sellers?id=4007