Why are bids alliwed to be cancelled by sellers because they aren't getting competing bids

[woodland_gnome]

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 may 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).

[heritagehomemaking]

The cancellation was about 18 hours before the end of the auction, so fits within the permissible. But, the item was relisted 2 days later with a higher starting price. I'm not left to wonder why the bid was cancelled. This procedure just hands the reins to sellers to stop sales at will, so long as 12+ hours before the auction ending time. I'm not sure I willl waste my time with auction bids any longer as this has happened twice now (different sellers), and seems to be a trend.