My experience with trying to canceling a purchase made in error.
During the Christmas season I sold several figurines . One buyer purchased 17 units. I had accidentally listed one Item twice for auction. I gt a flag from eBay saying it was a multiple listing and buyers could not see the duplicate , so I figured it was taken care of. The auctions for several items were broken up in two days. The duplicate was on each. When they were over, the first person paid for one of the duplicates and I shipped within hours. The second person bought (sniped) 17 items. When paid for I went to ship and discovered I did not have the Item. After explaining the mistake , I smoothed it over with the second buyer and gave a prompt refund and shipment. The buyer got their items a gave great feedback. Then after feeling gouged by eBay fees, I decided to cancel the sale to get my final fee back. I followed the prompts and was presented with a list of thumbnails to pick the item that I wanted to cancel. I found two identical thumbnails of the item. I could not tell which one went to which buyer, so I clicked on the first one and figured I would get more info. The only option was to hit "cancel". Expecting some sort of confirmation page to show which transaction and buyer I was canceling. That was a wrong assumption. Ebay automatically canceled the first buyer and returned their money even though shipping and feedback showed a happy customer who I now had to bug to get my money back. I did not know that part yet (the return of their money) as there was no indication that this would happen or even which Item I was actually canceling when I hit cancel. I did realize that it was the wrong one though, so I went back and picked the other. I hit cancel, and guess what, eBay canceled all 17 of the items they bought and were happy with, and attempted to drain my account of over $400 dollars. Gave me dings for 17 bad transactions, and left it up to me to try to get my money back from two happy customers. I tried resolving this through several calls to eBay persons who could not even understand the issue, and had to go back and forth with their supervisor to come up with the same answer, you did it , and it is your fault. I have only had couple of neg feedbacks in 15 years as an eBay seller, and had recommended eBay to friends and family. Now I have had to start all over with a new account. I am seeking every other alternative to selling on eBay including etsy , amazon (not the amazon want-to-be) and have gotten my own domain. I have never liked amazon as a buyer, and have liked the grass roots feel of eBay, now I might as well use them. I go to google search for items on eBay for competitive pricing info and find ebay's (amazon want-to-be search result EIN) showing the item, and that they are currently out of stock. I use the same search phrase within eBay only to find several of the Items are listed and were pushed out of the search. I wonder how many of my sales are lost due to ebay's canned item taking precedence on google and showing "out of stock" even though they have the item. I have tried to list my items using their Amazon want-to-be EIN and it rarely works, just like their mailing program designed to get free data at my expense, with bad user interface. I often used to quit clicking on amazon for that same reason when looking for an item because I got the same out of stock page on more obsolete items of which I sell a lot of (surplus). I hope the market demands an alternative soon for people like myself, my friends and family, and most of all my previously happy customers.
