Seller Gives False Reason for Cancelled Auction Sale—Re-lists Same Item in a Second Auction

[regal1956]

Earlier this week I was the winning bidder on an eBay auction. I paid within 15 minutes after winning the auction. The next day, the seller cancelled the sale and refunded my payment in full. The reason given for the cancellation was “Out of stock or damaged.”

The seller is now offering in a new auction the same item I successfully bid on. (This second auction began within a day after the first auction concluded.) The item is advertised as new. So as far as the seller is concerned, this item is neither out of stock nor damaged. It appears the seller was dissatisfied with the winning bid in the auction I won, cancelled the sale on a false pretense, and then relisted the same item for a second auction.

I reported this to eBay on Monday night. As of Thursday afternoon, the seller is still offering the same item I successfully bid on for auction on eBay.

As I understand eBay policy, both buyer and seller must abide by the terms of an auction. Neither is allowed to arbitrarily back out. Yet in this case, eBay has allowed the seller to ignore the result of the first auction and start a second one. Further, I can find no way to leave feedback for this transaction. So this seller showing 100% positive feedback.

Two questions for eBay:

• Are sellers allowed to cancel the results of an auction if they don’t like the winning bid?

• Are buyers not allowed to leave feedback if a seller does this?

If this is how eBay now conducts auctions, then it will change my attitude toward buying via eBay.

[casuallyattractive]

I think this is a very annoying problem.

Sellers should be acting like sellers not little kids.

If you are going to post something up for auction YOU AGGREE TO SELL IT!!!

I had a item that I sold recently for $125 it was worth around $1000

Did I want to cancel it? Heck Yeah. Did I? No...

I am just saying that when you list something up for auction you automatically agree to sell it to the highest bidder.

This should NOT happen on eBay or anywhere else, it is unfair and uncalled for.

But unfortunately there is absolutely nothing you can do about this.

[kathiec]

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@regal1956 wrote:

What’s weird is that eBay has clear evidence that the seller cancelled the sale under a false pretense and is re-listing the same item. Yet they’re allowing this to happen. In fact, eBay is making the evidence available to potential buyers in the new auction. In the current listing, if buyers know where to click they can see that this item was successfully bid on in an auction ended on February 14th. It even shows the amount of the winning bid. So eBay is openly telling buyers that the item they’re bidding on was already sold in a previous auction. By doing this, eBay is advertising that winning a bid is no guarantee that the seller will follow through. Considering that trust is a crucial element of an online business, one would think eBay would try hard to avoid this.

Here’s my take. In the early days of establishing itself, eBay had to win over a skeptical public unaccustomed to buying stuff online. Potential buyers had to be convinced eBay was a safe and trustworthy place to do business. So early on, eBay aggressively monitored transactions to ensure good buyer experiences. (I recall reading seller complaints that dishonest buyers could get away with anything.) Fast forward to today. Everyone buys online without worry, and eBay is now a profitable behemoth. Increased customer trust and the economy of scale means eBay can let down its guard. Thus, eBay likely has relaxed its protective attitude toward buyers. It’s becoming easier for sellers to unethically game the system. As long as sales are made and eBay gets its cut, it’s all good.

When the money well is gushing, a business will evolve to make more. If the buyer experience erodes, so be it. Caveat emptor.

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Spoken like someone who wasn't around in the early days. I've been here for 25 years. In the earliest days, if you had a problem as a buyer you were totally on your own. Paypal wasn't yet a gleam in someone's eye. When you made a purchase you sent the seller a check via snail mail. So eBay had zero enforcement power. 

Sometime after Paypal entered the picture, eBay offered limited protection. If there were enough funds in the seller's account, they would refund you. Of course, sellers pulling scams never left the money in their account. So eBay would step in and refund after the first $25. 

And in those early days eBay didn't even monitor cancelled sales. 

[regal1956]

I stand corrected.

It’s easy to see why eBay doesn’t care about this sort of thing. After all, if the seller succeeds in getting a higher price on the second auction, then eBay makes more money. And eBay can afford losing a trickle of disgruntled buyers. That’s a negligible dent in their multi billion dollar annual revenue.

At least my feedback now shows up on the seller’s feedback history. It’s possible the winning bid on the second auction will be less than my winning bid. But I won’t lose any sleep if it’s more. Trying to convince a money making machine to behave ethically is always a futile endeavor.

[the_pineapple_did_it]

This happened to me as well. Just this past Saturday, I was the winning bidder on a listing for a Razer Blade Stealth laptop . It was so close, that the green banner that usually says, "Congats you won! Pay now" said: " "We are determining the winner, please refresh this page" ( Never saw THAT before!).  

The price was $550.00 and only two other people were competing. 

You never saw a teenager more ecstatic  than my daughter, when I refreshed, and we saw we WON!

 That same day, before I could even pay, the seller cancelled.  I got notified, that I requested to cancel, yet oddly the reason showed as , "Out of stock, or damaged". 

My teen went from elated to heartbroken in mere minutes. We had been watching this item for seven days, dreaming of the possibility, that we might win her dream pc for a price we could afford. 

I did leave the appropriate feedback, but that doesn't help her feel any better. I'm guessing one of the other bidders contacted the seller and offered to buy it for more money, off site. Just a gut feeling. People suck sometimes. 😞

[regal1956]

As an epilogue, here’s the latest on the seller who refused to honor my winning bid and started a second auction. My winning bid a week ago was $402. The winning bid for the second auction was $295.

That’s assuming the seller honors the new winning bid...

[downunder-61]

If they don't they are going to be hit with some fairly bad feedbacks and or defects if this keeps up for too long.

[regal1956]

What’s gratifying is that because eBay allowed the seller to violate its own rules, both the seller and eBay made less money. Sometimes ethical behavior is good business.

[reallynicestamps]

Some Top Rated or Power Sellers have the privilege of a seven day Hold on feedback. That is, the buyer cannot leave feedback for seven days after purchase/delivery/cancellation.

Mark your calendar.

Keep in mind that the most effective feedback is calm and factual.

While you have about 500 characters to use, KISS!  Short and simple is more effective.

BTW, eBay does not use feedback to assess member accounts. Only about 40% of transactions get any feedback, and it is considered as an opinion, no more.

[hgil8527]

It's my opinion -- and this is just my opinion -- that buyers blow this thing way out of proportion.

We are all buyers and sellers, if you use ebay long enough.  As a buyer, I don't leave negative feedback unless there are extenuating circumstances.  I would never leave negative feedback for a seller, who uses this for at the very least some extra income on the side, and is, much of the time, losing money or hustling for less than minimum wage.  Reasons I leave negative feedback are on my profile, but I can sum them up by saying they wouldn't take back an item I no longer needed or had a defect / was different enough to be it a scam or the item came damaged and the seller refused to deal with the problem.

I think buyers tend to think sellers are "rollin' in that ebay money" but many of us simply aren't working on that much of a margin.  It's annoying to me, as a seller, that a $0.99 auction starting price, encouraged by the ebay app, would end up selling for $0.99 because the item had very little demand.  While I have honored such auction prices, it encourages us to add handling fees to your shipping if the items are really OK to sell at a low rate.

Another issue is that I sometimes cancel auctions is because I am afraid of shipping to certain individuals, or unable to ship to the buyer.  The buyer is someone who seems to be ordering from out of country.  They don't pay right away -- which is their prerogative up to a point, fine -- but if that is combined with a profile that says "Location: Turkey" or has feedback over a year old.  Those are two reasons I recently got negative feedback from buyers after cancelling their bids for "issue with address" (or "out of stock", it doesn't matter, the buyer can leave feedback).  If I cancel an auction for that reason, I shouldn't be subjected to the feedback, but I am.  I personally would never leave negative feedback for a seller that refunded me for anything I bought on ebay before it shipped, or after, even though it is possible for me to leave it.  It's just expecting too much from the entire process.  Sadly, even if I do cancel an auction, I HAVE NO WAY TO UNDO WHAT I DID.  And if eBay's clunky time wasting software from 1997 messes up or is unclear, it wastes so much of my time dealing with their customer services that my small-time eBay side hustle becomes net negative.  Yet, I'd rather NIP IT IN THE BUD at the point the auction ends, than ship an item and deal with additional tasks after that if something goes wrong.

I cannot count the number of times ebay has slipped international shipping into my listing just because I wanted to support Canada, so I don't even do that anymore.  Because of that, my spidey senses are on alert when I see odd addresses or lack of addresses or "Location: Venezuela" even if the person is living in Maryland and simply hasn't updated their profile to reflect that.

Buyers can be demanding.  As a buyer I know I hate to pay for shipping, but I rarely ask for combined shipping.  I've been dinged before by paying for separate shipping only to have it arrive combined without a shipping refund.  I see that as a cost of being an eBay buyer.  I tend to favor listings with low shipping or no shipping (baked in shipping), but I know that's causing the seller to really scrape the barrel if the price is low AND they've baked in shipping.

Let me give you one last example of something unfair on eBay.  A few years ago I convinced myself I would "be a reseller" from watching too many YouTubers who do this for a living.  I don't, I'm just clearing out old stuff from my basement, when I don't give it away to Goodwill.  But anyway I got excited and I won an auction on an entirely different auction site, which had extremely terse regulations by the way and nothing as nice or friendly as ebay, and in that auction I bought 10 old radios for $200.  It turned out 9 of the radios were broken or needed repairs.   All smelled like oil and needed cleaning.  I spent a week cleaning them all at least 4 hours a day.  Then I discovered one needed $200 in replacement parts.  8 were worthless and 1 I thought I could sell for $30.  I put it on eBay at a low price to encourage a bid war, and it was auctioned off for $4.99 + $30 shipping this large old radio.  I checked it thoroughly before I listed it.  I was convinced everything was working.  When the "Boombox" was received by the winning bidder, he claimed it was not playing through one of the speakers.  I had no way to get out of it.  I don't know if it was even true.  He knew what to say in the request for refund, even though I have a NO RETURNS policy (which, by the way, means absolutely nothing)...  I had to eat the loss. I had to refund him $4.99 plus the shipping and I got nothing out of it.  It would have cost more for him to return it to me than I could have gotten for it on a good day.  The other radio is fully restored and has been listed on eBay for 4 years, unsold.  So, I'm out $235 on the deal since the other radios have never sold and went to Goodwill.

It's very very hard to make a living as a seller, and buyer feedback being negative over things like not winning a $.99 auction that you got refunded, "supposedly" because an item is out of stock or the address didn't work in the invoicer shouldn't be OK, but I guess that's where we're at with policy in the world of eBay auctions.

[kh_nipun]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.