Seller cancelled bid, because I was the only bidder and price was $.99.

Question

A seller cancelled two bids on two different items because I was the only bidder. I thought that you had to sell if you listed even if you did not get what you want unless you set a minimum.

mr_lincoln · Answer

Hi @1bbcardcollector1

The fault is not all on the Seller's. eBay does a very poor job of educating Sellers on how to use the Auction format listing so that they make a profit and not give away their items.

A good way to determine the starting price on an auction is to set it at an amount that if it sells on ONE bid you make a profit, more bids means more profit.

We see this situation repeated over and over here ...

woodland_gnome · Answer

A seller can cancel any bidder's bid(s--one cancellation removes all bids by that bidder on that auction) at any time before the auction ends, and may do so for just about any reason, the verboten reasons having to do with schemes to evade eBay fees, such as:

It is specifically against the rules for a seller to cancel all bids and end the auction early without a winner IF it is because s/he deliberately set the Starting Price lower than s/he was willing to sell for, and it hasn't reached that high. This is considered fee avoidance because eBay charges a substantial fee for sellers to have a Reserve Price so they aren't promising to sell as low as their Starting Price.

But there are legitimate reasons why a seller would have to do so, and a few years ago eBay got tired of having to divine the subjective intent of a seller who took that action, so it adopted some procedures that make it less attractive to do so with that intention: it can only be done before the countdown reaches 12 hours AND it charges a fee (the FVF% for that seller in that category times the highest cancelled bid) when s/he does so (with the first such fee per calendar year waived to allow for the very occasional legitimate reason for doing so).