Ebay harassing me for fees on item I did not sell.

[grass-hopper11]

Hi, I have been a buyer of Ebay since 2007. I never tried to sell anything on Ebay until last month. I listed an item and very shortly after cancelled the listing. Ebay is now harassing me for $59.00 in sellers' fees for an item I never sold. This was not clear from the onset. Ebay advertises that you can list up to 249 items for free. I've contacted an Ebay Customer Service Rep who informed me someone would get back to me. No one never did. Now Ebay's Collection Agency is harassing me regularly.  Any advice?  

[fashunu4eeuh]

Hi @grass-hopper11 sorry for your dilemmas. 

Canceling an auction at the last minute (apparently because you were unhappy with the bid amounts) is frowned upon. It hurts the site by creating BBE and upset buyers. This is one reason why ending an auction with bids early has a fee associated with it. We can see this is a pattern you have repeated in the past. What you are now faced with is the outcome of your choices.

Selling on eBay is not free from costs. You may be able to list an item for free, but the actions you took afterwards had fees and fines attached. Sadly, not learning the rules and policies prior to listing an item has now lead you to these consequences.

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@fashunu4eeuh wrote: ... Canceling an auction at the last minute (apparently because you were unhappy with the bid amounts) is frowned upon. It hurts the site by creating BBE and upset buyers. This is one reason why ending an auction with bids early has a fee associated with it. We can see this is a pattern you have repeated in the past. ....

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There is no evidence that the OP has ever canceled bids and ended an auction early.  

Examination of the bid histories of the three available listings shows two that never received any bids, and one that was ended early but without any bid cancellations.  The one that was ended early was ended on day 2 of a 7-day auction, not at the last  minute.

[stainlessenginecovers]

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@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

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@stainlessenginecovers wrote: ... If you cancel auction listings after a bid met the reserve, you owe unless you let the auction run and buyer doesn't pay and you then open a 'non payer' after 4 days.

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In this case, the auction had no reserve. The seller didn't cancel the auction: He ended it early but allowed the bids to remain, so it shows as Sold.  

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You used to be NOT able to 'end an auction listing' if you had bids....you had to Cancel the bids first, then end listing- I guess it changed? 

[wastingtime101]

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@grass-hopper11 wrote:

I NEVER received any payment from the buyer because I canceled the listings.

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If you're still looking for answers/help I will repeat what I said above:

This page will show you transactions @grass-hopper11 :

https://www.ebay.com/mes/transactionlist?sh=true

Off to the right there's a link to view details next to each transaction. Can you post a screenshot of your transactions so we can help you determine what those fees are for?

[lacemaker3]

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@stainlessenginecovers wrote:

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@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

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@stainlessenginecovers wrote: ... If you cancel auction listings after a bid met the reserve, you owe unless you let the auction run and buyer doesn't pay and you then open a 'non payer' after 4 days.

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In this case, the auction had no reserve. The seller didn't cancel the auction: He ended it early but allowed the bids to remain, so it shows as Sold.  

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You used to be NOT able to 'end an auction listing' if you had bids....you had to Cancel the bids first, then end listing- I guess it changed? 

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No, it hasn't changed, but that's not exactly how it works.

You can end a listing early with bids, as long as there are more than 12 hours left. But if you don't ALSO cancel the bids, then when you end it early it will be sold to the highest bidder at the time. Which is what happened to OP's auction that had bids.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/ending-listing?id=4146

I'm not sure if you have to cancel the bids first, or if you can cancel the bids while you are ending the listing. In OP's case, he cancelled at least 3 listings at the same time, so he may have done it in bulk, and not realized that he should have cancelled the bids first, for the one that had bids.

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@stainlessenginecovers wrote: ... You used to be NOT able to 'end an auction listing' if you had bids....you had to Cancel the bids first, then end listing- I guess it changed? 

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If an auction has received bids and  has more than 12 hours left, and if the seller starts the process of ending the auction early, they the seller has to choose between (1) sell to the high bidder or (2) cancel the bids and end with no transaction.  Sellers who thought that you had to cancel the bids separately first would never be shown both of these choices, so they didn't realize that canceling the bids did not have to be done first as a separate step.

[lacemaker3]

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@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

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@stainlessenginecovers wrote: ... You used to be NOT able to 'end an auction listing' if you had bids....you had to Cancel the bids first, then end listing- I guess it changed? 

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If an auction has received bids and  has more than 12 hours left, and if the seller starts the process of ending the auction early, they the seller has to choose between (1) sell to the high bidder or (2) cancel the bids and end with no transaction.  Sellers who thought that you had to cancel the bids separately first would never be shown both of these choices, so they didn't realize that canceling the bids did not have to be done first as a separate step.

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@nobody*s_perfect,

I'm  sure you're right that is the work-flow process when a seller ends a single listing.

But, does the seller still get a choice when they end multiple listings at the same time? Or does eBay just go ahead and end all the listings without giving the seller an option to cancel the bids as well?

In this situation, OP ended at least 3 listings at the exact same time. That strongly suggests that they ended them together, in bulk. So was the seller given the option to cancel the bids at the same time, or not? Do we know?

[nobody*s_perfect]

I don't know. The timing does suggest that eBay made that decision for him.