Seller has cancelled my winning Bid

Question

This past week I have had two purchases cancelled by the seller AFTER I paid for item... One said they could not print a label as address what wrong. (not the case as I use this for all transactions and NO problems) other just did not ship the paid Item..when I contacted them for shipping date..they replyed the were not sending and for ME to cancell?? What is happening with sellers NOT accepting a winning bid if its not to their liking?? I Paid for item etc..they just are cancelling??? Has this happened to others..what is my recourse?

woodland_gnome · Answer

Those are two different situations. As to the first:

The seller should have automatically gotten a "defect" when s/he cancelled the transaction, but the lie s/he told--problem with shipping address--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.

For the second situation:

If you don't get a full refund or a package from the seller by the time the estimated delivery date you were given when you paid has fully passed, go to your Purchase History for that item, click the link for more options and select that you haven't received the item, then follow instructions from there. If you haven't gotten the item as described or a full refund after 3 days (but before 21 days) from doing so go back and you should find a link to "Ask eBay to step in" to get your refund. Once you get the refund go back to the information about the first situation and follow that (except the part where s/he lied to avoid a defect; s/he gets one when eBay steps in for this situation).