selling with no minimum

[bobsmopar1970]

How can people put items on and list how great it is with no reserve and when you are biddling as are other people just cancel the auction when it is about to end?  Says your bid is cancelled because the 

auctions has ended when there is a day and 1/2 left?  Can you just contact the seller and offer something at any time?  This does not seem fair to me.  Has happened to me twice now in 3 days on 

4 different items.  If e-bay lets this go on it does not seem fair, expecially since I was the highest bidder.

Happen to anybody else?

[pacerprincess0308]

I've been on the receiving end of this before, and it was an item I really wanted. It seems right now sellers have the power to pull their listings at any time for any reason and I guess that makes sense because they take all the risk of angry buyers never wanting to do business with them again. Not fun though for sure.

[7606dennis]

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@bobsmopar1970wrote:

How can people put items on and list how great it is with no reserve and when you are biddling as are other people just cancel the auction when it is about to end?  Says your bid is cancelled because the 

auctions has ended when there is a day and 1/2 left?  Can you just contact the seller and offer something at any time?  This does not seem fair to me.  Has happened to me twice now in 3 days on 

4 different items.  If e-bay lets this go on it does not seem fair, expecially since I was the highest bidder.

Happen to anybody else?

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Actually, all eBay auctions, by virtue of the mandatory starting price, have a reserve.  It is the amount of the starting price set by the seller.

With regard to the seller withdrawing the item from a sale, it has long been the owner of the property's right to withdraw the item from an auction sale up until the hammer falls.  The one exception being when the auction is an absolute one where them item has been guaranteed to be sold to the highest bidder regardless of price.  However, the laws governing such auctions prohibit them from having any type of mandatory price set so eBay auctions do not qualify as absolute auctions.

While industry practices all for the owner to withdraw the item up until the item is declared sold in the auction businesses' usual manner, eBay has instituted a policy that states that an auction may only be ended within the last 12 hours by it being sold to the current high bidder.  Of course, if there is no bidder the auction can be ended early without penalty to the seller.

Sellers may also cancel all bids on an item being sold at auction at any time up until the scheduled ending time of the listing and permit the auction to end without a winner.  However, they run the risk of a bid being placed between them cancelling the bids and end of the listing, in which case they would be bound by the rules to sell.  

[mudshark61369]

@bobsmopar1970,

"How can people put items on and list how great it is with no reserve and when you are bidding as are other people just cancel the auction when it is about to end"? 

Experienced sellers usually will not do that, their starting price should be the least they are willing to accept.  Less experienced selers take ebay's not very good advice to start auctions at a low price "to encourage bidding" which often does not work out for the seller.

  Did you check the seller's feedback profile to see if they had sold before, sold very few items, or hadn't sold in a long time?   A new or very occassional seller can have a fair number of feedback and a 100% positive rating but it can be all for buying, which is why you should check the feedback profile of all sellers you think of buying from them.

Inexperienced sellers who start items at very low prices may not know that most bid activity takes place near an auction's end.  They may have early bidders, bidding one increment at a time, which doesn't raise the price much, and think they may not get their wished for price, so they panic and cance the auction.

"Says your bid is cancelled because the 

auctions has ended when there is a day and 1/2 left"? 

A day and a half is not when an auction is about to end according to ebay.  As 7606dennis wrote a seller can end an auction with or without bids at almost any time up to the last 12 hours of the listing.

  If there are bids and the seller cancels them inside of 12 hours, they can do so without incurring fees if they sell to the highest bidder.  If all they do is cancel bids to end the auction ebay wil give them a defect if there is no sale to the highest bidder,   If the seller does this often enough ebay will take action, or if a bidder doubts the item was ended because it was lost or broken, they can report the seller, though if they have not done it before the seller skates, since they are allowed 1 wrongful ending of a listing. 

If the seller has experience did you do an advanced search by seller, enter their ID, and check listings in the last 15 days?  It could be the seller re-listed and sold the item.

" Can you just contact the seller and offer something at any time?  This does not seem fair to me".

I've had requests to end an auction several times, one this last weekend, by people who do not want to wait out an auction, and either offer a price or ask what price I would do that for. The person who contacted me this past weekend claimed they often get busy and miss the end of an auction and wanted to know the price I would take to end the auction.  I will not do that if I have people who have been watching the listing.  I have ended a couple of auctions with no watchers, and listed the item as a private buy it now, but the offered price had to be more than my best hoped for price.