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Seller cancels item right before it sells?!?
I was the highest bidder for a Roger Federer picture that was autographed by him. It was set to cost me just north of $50 which I'm sure was going to increase a bit before the auction ended but with hours to go, the seller canceled the auction and the item was removed. What the heck is this? How can you list something for auction and just not sell it because it looks like you aren't going to get the price you wanted. That's what reserves are for. I just didn't know sellers could do this? Seems completely counter intuitive to what an auction is. Is there any recourse for this or is it just business as usual here at Ebay? Thoughts?
The item was located at: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ROGER-FEDERER-Hand-Signed-Tennis-Wimbledon-Photo-Poster-16x12--Official-COA/116446976603
woodland_gnome
·1 year agoA 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 (not "right before it sells; realize that the endtime displayed is the ACTUALY endtime, not the scheduled one) 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).
disneyshopper
Mentor1 year agoIf the seller cancelled all the bids and ended the listing without a winner, he was charged a penalty equal to the FVF that would have been charged on the highest bid.