Paid Order Cancelled.

[consbo22]

I recently made a purchase of a pair of earrings. I had bid on one, but then was outbid for more than I had wanted to pay. Seller had a second pair of the same earrings that had no bids. All of a sudden, again I was outbid. Find out when auction came to an end, the mysterious "other bidder" was gone, and I had won BOTH auctions. I had to start a new eBay account after years with a 100% positive feedback, and now have a new account with the same. Being the person I am, I did bid on both pair, and did buy both pair, although the seller would not combine the shipping. Well, the shipping date was given to me, and all of a sudden I get a message from the seller telling me the stones are damaged and they refunded my money. On BOTH pairs? I thought... looking at the sellers page tonight. They have 4299 items for sale and every single one of them have 1 bid. Are they bidding on their own items to up the price? Yet their feedback is quite good. I don't understand why they would do this.

[ed8108]

You may wish to contact & provide all the above information to eBay trust & safety

[mudshark61369]

@consbo22,

  " ... Seller had a second pair of the same earrings that had no bids. All of a sudden, again I was outbid. Find out when auction came to an end, the mysterious "other bidder" was gone, and I had won BOTH auctions".

When you bid on an auction your bids are active until the auction ends, because another bidder could retract their bid, or the seller could cancel bids, leaving you the winner. 

  "Well, the shipping date was given to me, and all of a sudden I get a message from the seller telling me the stones are damaged and they refunded my money. On BOTH pairs ... They have 4299 items for sale and every single one of them have 1 bid. Are they bidding on their own items to up the price?"

They refunded you because they had hoped you would bid more when you had been automatically out bid.  It is unfortunately, a common occurrence with chinese and indian jewelry auctions especially the very low start price ones. They do have a cohort place an automatic bid for the minimum price they hope to get for the items, and hope people will bid against it. Even though the evidence is strong ebay can't absolutely prove what is happening so the sellers keep getting away with it.

  "Yet their feedback is quite good. I don't understand why they would do this".

Because the seller refunds before they cancel, people can't leave appropriate feedback since the item gets marked as unpaid.  In looking at your profile page I see you buy from foreign sellers fairly often. I do not know what you consider a "good" feedback percentage to be, but a really good high volume seller should have a 99.6% or better rating.  Those with less than 98.9% should be avoided.  Click on the feedback numbers of some of the sellers you've bought from and check the numbers of neutral and negatives they've received. Click on those numbers to read only those comments.

FYI, as long as you only buy on ebay, you will have a 100% feedback rating. Buyers cannot get neutral/negative feedback or comments. All buyers have a 100% rating even the non payers, serial bid retractors, and scammers.

[consbo22]

With my original account, which was started some oh, 22+ years ago, I remember the days when a buyer could get a less than desirable feedback for being a non-paying bidder, etc. I did not know that you could not leave negative feedback for a buyer, as when I first started on eBay, it was the days when I was mailing money orders to sellers! I do buy from foreign sellers, but not exclusively. I buy from those that have what I want. However, when I say someone with a a 97.9% feedback as fairly decent, I was looking at the fact that the seller has tens of thousands of sales/feedback to say 20 negatives in 6 months, and what that negative feedback is for. One buyer left a seller 12 of these alone, for an order that was taking too long to get to them (over the holiday season at that). I was recently contacted by a woman some 65 miles away from me who was delivered an item that belonged to me. I had ordered it from Macy's in July. I got it in Jan. The USPS had lost it. I understand certain situations. 

[releasethekraken_1]

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@consbo22 wrote:

With my original account, which was started some oh, 22+ years ago, I remember the days when a buyer could get a less than desirable feedback for being a non-paying bidder, etc. I did not know that you could not leave negative feedback for a buyer

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I remember when a buyer could get a "less than desirable" feedback because they left the seller a well-deserved "less than desirable" feedback. That's one of the reasons why eBay got rid of negative/neutral feedback for buyers 13 years ago.