Seller cancellation of an order.

Question

I purchased an item through Buy It Now. I paid for the item with Paypal. I received a message that the order was to be shipped with a tracking number. Then, I received notice from the seller that the transaction had been canceled. Can the seller do that?

woodland_gnome · Answer

Yes, s/he can, but there are consequences. The seller already got a "defect" when s/he cancelled the transaction (unless s/he lied to eBay to blame you, in which case we'd need details especially what eBay said the reason was in the cancellation notice). That is 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).

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.