eBay

sin-n-dex · ‎10-01-2025

Just wanted to share this since people ask about cancelling orders here quite frequently (and I'm doubting most regular posters have seen the verbiage in this email unless maybe they cancelled and eBay decided it wasn't for the right reason).

Shared with me... It was my sale that got cancelled (just passing this along).

***

Activity on your account isn’t following policy: Listing cancellation policy

Activity on your account didn’t follow our Listing cancellation policy.

What happened

Canceling a transaction and selecting a false reason to avoid a defect isn’t allowed.

More specific details are provided below.

What this means for you

Because you may not have been aware of this policy, we're letting you know about it and ask that you follow this policy in the future.

No other actions have been taken on your account

Not following this policy in the future will result in a temporary 3-day restriction placed on your account, and your listings will be hidden from search during this period. All fees paid or payable for listings that are ended and/or hidden from search will not be refunded or otherwise credited to your account.

This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence.

Cancel transactions only for valid and accurate reasons.

More about this policy

- Canceling a transaction and selecting a false reason to avoid a defect isn’t allowed
- To cancel a transaction, sellers must:
-- Notify the buyer of the cancellation reason
-- Cancel the transaction within 30 days of the sale
-- Use the correct process in My eBay or Seller Hub:
--- Go to My eBay > Sold and locate the item. From the More actions dropdown menu, select Cancel this order. Or;
--- Go to Seller Hub and locate the item. From the Actions dropdown menu, select End.
-- Choose a reason for the cancellation and follow the on-screen instructions

This policy helps sellers avoid problems with buyers, and prevents sellers from avoiding defects by falsely selecting a reason to end a transaction.

Learn more: Listing cancellation policy

If you have any questions or concerns, or think we’ve made a mistake, please get in touch. We're here to help.

We appreciate your understanding.

Thanks,
eBay

Please don't reply to this message. It was sent from an address that doesn't accept incoming email.

sin-n-dex · ‎10-02-2025

@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:
@12345jamesstamps wrote:
I had one like that a while back.
Gave a refund because one stamp had a small tear...and I got a 'out of stock' 'ding' from AI.
The 'ding' was after item was marked shipped when I gave a refund.
I did not mark it as a cancellation or out of stock item.
I notice the photo(s) after it got shipped and didn't want buyer to get mad or give me a bad feedback.
Lesson learned...no more Mr. Nice Guy.

I refunded for a similar reason after I printed the label through Ebay.

If you refund without an scan by the carrier it is an out of stock ding.

If you do not use a tracked shipping method, refunding can be dangerous to your seller level.

That's generally why I try to fill an order, even if I have to refund on the order. I have noticed if you ship *something* and get a carrier scan, you don't get an OOS ding for refunding.

C.

gurlcat · ‎10-02-2025

@keraz-0 wrote:

My thinking was, that cancelling was the least potentially damaging to my seller rating. Had I shipped, the buyer could have started a inad, and left a negative on top of it. Then I get 2 dings instead of 1.

For future reference, your thinking wasn't completely accurate. A buyer absolutely can give negative feedback for a canceled order -you can find those negs pretty easily on feedback pages, especially cases where the buyer won an auction and the seller was disappointed by the amount of their winning bid, so they just cancelled and refunded. Another common one is where the seller is obviously dropshipping from Amazon or box stores and doesn't keep track of those items' stock levels, so if they're 'Out' then the fake eBay seller (what I call dropshippers) cannot fulfill the eBay buyer's order. What's extra frustrating about those is, for whatever reason there is often a delay of multiple days before the fake seller does the cancellation. So if the buyer really needed the item soon, they're back to where they started before waiting those days, for nothing.

In a case like yours, the buyer said their preference would have been to receive the partial order/partial refund, but luckily for you, they didn't neg you because they could see you had tried to give them a choice but they didn't respond soon enough. But if they were a jerk they could have negged you and eBay would not remove it.

So here are the REAL harms that you had to weigh on Monday:
*(What you did) Cancel for OOS and definitely get a Performance defect which is a very HEAVY one; the tolerance is extremely low. And possibly get a neg.
*Go ahead and ship, then send the buyer another message (or a note in the package), apologizing profusely and offering them a choice of either $____ partial refund or a free return. If they did file an INAD it's only a Service Metrics strike, which you can get a lot more of than OOS cancellations before they harm your account. And possibly a neg.

So that's 1 guaranteed severe defect and a possible neg, versus 1 possible minor strike and a possible neg. By sending the item you very possibly would have no forms of 'ding' at all, especially if you did that "profuse apology" thing. Buyers can be extremely forgiving if you reveal your humanity, because no human is perfect; we're all vulnerable. Use a phrase like "I'm so embarrassed" and only a cartoon villain would want to embarrass you even more by negging you.

sin-n-dex · ‎10-02-2025

@gurlcat wrote:
What would have happened if he had refunded all but 1 cent of what the buyer paid?

I see that as gaming the system and I think many buyers would understand that to be the case.

If I was annoyed at a seller and they refunded me all but one cent to avoid the ding, I'd be making a complaint. (Wouldn't leave bad FB, but would quietly complain to eBay that the seller is avoiding a defect by playing games). I would never refund all by one cent, buyers are smart, they'll figure out something is up if you do that.

C.

sin-n-dex · ‎10-02-2025

@inhawaii wrote:
SELLER: Dear customer, Sorry. the pink widget you purchased is out of stock. I can send you a black one instead or do you want to cancel the order?

BUYER: Cancel the order.

SELLER CANCELS ORDER.
REASON: BUYER REQUESTED TO CANCEL.

Violation or not?

I don't offer the option to cancel. I would say "I can't ship the white widget, I have a black one instead, and I'll also refund your order because you aren't receiving the item you paid for, but I don't want you to go away empty handed so here's a black widget for you gratis."

There, problem solved, no violation. (And I refund, but don't cancel the order).

C.

sin-n-dex · ‎10-02-2025

@jonathanbrightlight wrote:
@inhawaii wrote:
SELLER: Dear customer, Sorry. the pink widget you purchased is out of stock. I can send you a black one instead or do you want to cancel the order?

BUYER: Cancel the order.

SELLER CANCELS ORDER.
REASON: BUYER REQUESTED TO CANCEL.

Violation or not?
I very much doubt I could track it down, but I seem to remember one of the Blues answering that question a long time ago, and the answer I remember was that it is not a valid buyer-initiated cancellation if the seller asked first. That would be considered abuse of the cancellation process, like @slippinjimmy said.

I vaguely remember that post.

Anyway I try to avoid cancelling, I don't offer to cancel, I might offer a refund, but I try to send them something gratis so they don't have a bad opinion of the transaction (and how eBay works). Other sellers don't do stuff like that, and I've had customers return even after I've messed up their order.

C.

sin-n-dex · ‎10-02-2025

@luckythewinner wrote:

In your title you state:
"Do not choose the wrong reason for cancel, eBay is monitoring"
So what is the reason you would have chosen instead that would have prevented a defect but not violated eBay policy

You quoted @12345jamesstamps up until this, and this bit was mine because I'm the OP.

I wasn't the one who cancelled the order, someone in the eBay Canada forum did and shared this with us, I'm just sharing it here since it comes up in posts every now and again.

TBH I don't remember the last time I had to cancel... I had two of the same item the last time something happened and I sent the other one because it was the same in the same condition (but let the buyer know so they could inspect the replacement and be happy with it, and I offered to refund the whole order and they keep the replacement if they're not happy with it). This was a repeat buyer, I wasn't worried about being taken advantage of by doing this.

C.

12345jamesstamps · ‎10-02-2025

I got an order to ship to Canada today.

I will wait and see what buyer saids after the email I sent.

I also got a buyer who has their address in Korean.

That one I sent out 2 emails in two days.

Cancel with a problem with the address...that would be what I would use?

But I don't use tracking for these items since they are under 10 bucks.

Was hoping for buyer to ask for a cancel request first.

The hiccup yesterday with the glitch about photos and the red banner that everyone got.

Between midnight and 4:51 PM I had no sales...then when it got fixed the sold items came pouring in..

I was the first to announce that glitch yesterday.

Did it affect my sales?...yes and no....all the sales that came in after it got fixed was a blessing.

I thought I was banned from selling...LOL...no sales from midnight to almost 5 PM was so out of the ordinary...considering I been having good days lately.

USA to UK an item took only 8 days...

USA to Australia an item took 7 weeks.

USA to Japan is 2 weeks.

USA to France...item is missing but buyer is currently still waiting.

It's a guessing game with these tariffs.

gloryglorygifts · ‎10-02-2025

Earlier this week I wanted to cancel an order, for a bad address, I wasn't given the option. I think that there were only two and neither applied (out of stock and customer requested). The customer actually put the correct address in the feedback, but that was not an option!! I emailed the customer and told them they needed to cancel the order, change their address, and repurchase the item. So choosing either of the options I was offered would have been falsely reporting the cancellation. It wasn't my fault; it was the customer's.

I don't remember the last time that I had to cancel a sale for an address, but I seem to remember it being at option at one point. Imho, it should still be an option.

Thanks for the heads up!

babyers88 · ‎10-02-2025

for the address in korean copy & paste it in google translate, print the label in english and attach the korean language address on it as well. Problem solved I have done this more than a couple times with 100% success

inhawaii · ‎10-02-2025

@sin-n-dex wrote:
@inhawaii wrote:
SELLER: Dear customer, Sorry. the pink widget you purchased is out of stock. I can send you a black one instead or do you want to cancel the order?

BUYER: Cancel the order.

SELLER CANCELS ORDER.
REASON: BUYER REQUESTED TO CANCEL.

Violation or not?
I don't offer the option to cancel. I would say "I can't ship the white widget, I have a black one instead, and I'll also refund your order because you aren't receiving the item you paid for, but I don't want you to go away empty handed so here's a black widget for you gratis."

There, problem solved, no violation. (And I refund, but don't cancel the order).

C.

Great customer service!

The next time I need a widget, I'm buying from you. 😉

Zero To Sixty In Five - Pablo Cruise

powell-collectibles · ‎10-02-2025

@sin-n-dex wrote:
@jonathanbrightlight wrote:
@inhawaii wrote:
SELLER: Dear customer, Sorry. the pink widget you purchased is out of stock. I can send you a black one instead or do you want to cancel the order?

BUYER: Cancel the order.

SELLER CANCELS ORDER.
REASON: BUYER REQUESTED TO CANCEL.

Violation or not?
I very much doubt I could track it down, but I seem to remember one of the Blues answering that question a long time ago, and the answer I remember was that it is not a valid buyer-initiated cancellation if the seller asked first. That would be considered abuse of the cancellation process, like @slippinjimmy said.
I vaguely remember that post.

Anyway I try to avoid cancelling, I don't offer to cancel, I might offer a refund, but I try to send them something gratis so they don't have a bad opinion of the transaction (and how eBay works). Other sellers don't do stuff like that, and I've had customers return even after I've messed up their order.

C.

100% – that’s how I do it. I never let a buyer be a transaction worse than he expected. If I have to refund, I’m gonna give that buyer something for free. That does a few things – makes the buyer happy, increases the odds that the buyer will come back and buy something again, gives me a little self punishment for making a mistake. I have about 800 listings – I do have an occasional issue.

gurlcat · ‎10-02-2025

@sin-n-dex wrote:
when I learn something interesting (especially if it's on a subject that's talked about a lot here), I try to share. It's not like most people here would have ever received a message like that since it's pretty understood if you want to stay, you don't cancel, and buyers get upset when you say they asked to cancel and they didn't actually do that.

Who knows how many lurkers there are though? I know of at least a couple names who've been 'liking' for years without ever having made a single post or reply. And even among those who "understand" about cancelling, who knows what they may do without talking about about it here. 🤣

So all in all, VERY interesting and possibly helpful share! But can you say anything more about the circumstances where you found that eBay message posted? Like did the OP say what kind of cancellation reason they chose? Were they admitting they were dishonest and eBay busted them, or did they think they chose an honest reason and eBay falsely flagged them? Any details you can give might be huge, because if they're automating this now, it could be glitchy like everything else eBay tries (at least in the beginning).

gurlcat · ‎10-02-2025

@sin-n-dex wrote:
@gurlcat wrote:
What would have happened if he had refunded all but 1 cent of what the buyer paid?
I see that as gaming the system and I think many buyers would understand that to be the case.

If I was annoyed at a seller and they refunded me all but one cent to avoid the ding, I'd be making a complaint. (Wouldn't leave bad FB, but would quietly complain to eBay that the seller is avoiding a defect by playing games). I would never refund all by one cent, buyers are smart, they'll figure out something is up if you do that.

C.

If you go back in the replies I was asking about jamesstamp's situation, where he actually SHIPPED the item, and the only reason it was treated as an OOS cancellation by eBay was because it wasn't a tracked shipment (stamps).
So I don't know about you, but if I were the buyer in that scenario, I'd be pretty tickled to get an unexpected full refund (minus one cent). 😁

gurlcat · ‎10-02-2025

@gloryglorygifts wrote:
Earlier this week I wanted to cancel an order, for a bad address, I wasn't given the option. I think that there were only two and neither applied (out of stock and customer requested). The customer actually put the correct address in the feedback, but that was not an option!!

Slightly confusing: what do you mean by "the customer actually put the correct address in the feedback" ??

12345jamesstamps · ‎10-02-2025

I shipped the items.

After items shipped...I notice in my photos there was a tiny tear.

I decided to refund the buyer, and notified buyer, buyers got items, said it was OK and gave positive feedback because buyer was happy with freebies and getting a refund without asking.

I in essence gave free items to buyer who didn't care about a small tear in one item.

To me, this was a Mr. Nice Guy in my books.

I could have waited for buyer to email me...could have waited for buyer to maybe want to return for a refund.

I could have given buyer a hassle like some sellers here on this platform for a return and such.

Did I give the buyer a hassle like some here do? No...

It's called solving a problem before one arrives...Business 101