Buyer Cancelled Order

[soulsurfer333]

Last night, I won an auction for an old comic book. Within minutes of my winning bid, I received a notice from eBay that the seller had canceled the order. The reason given was that "The item was no longer available or damaged". I received no explanation or apology from the seller - just an impersonal boilerplate letter from eBay. I've been buying and selling on eBay for 18 years and I've never had this happen before. It feels lousy, and personally, suspicious.

What likely happened, and do I have any recourse?

[woodland_gnome]

The seller already got a "defect" when s/he cancelled the transaction for that reason. 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, let the reader draw his/her own conclusions from the facts--wait a couple of days to see if it's relisted and if so what changes) 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.