Is it common for sellers to cancel an order or pretend to ship it when the auction price is too low

[blandmark_01]

In the past two weeks, I have bid and won two auctions which for sure both went far lower than what was expected. The first one, I went on the sellers site and added an item to try and help him, He shipped the second item and made it seem like both were shipped, the auction item never arrived in the package. Ebay refunded my money.

The second item I won and paid for, and today the seller cancelled the order, refunded my money and said he shipped it to someone else by accident. No way that happened.

Has anyone else run into this type of problem and is this common on ebay?

[reallynicestamps]

It's not common,but it's not rare either.

It happens more often with new sellers (check your seller's Feedback page, if he doesn't have at least 10 Detailed Seller Ratings, he's a newbie).

It happens more often with auctions.

So, to prevent this, buy from Fixed Price listings and sellers with some experience.

If you are not sure, ask the seller for a quote on shipping to Canada, BEFORE bidding.

[sylviebee]

Most sellers will ship even when the selling price is much lower than it should be.  That's not always easy for sellers to suck up, but the vast majority do.

However, a growing trend among sellers is to simply cancel the transaction if they have even the slightest reason to do so.

That's because they can do so very easily with no repercussions if they choose the option "Buyer requested to cancel the transaction."

Many (or most) falsely believe that when transactions are canceled that buyers lose the ability to leave FB, but you can almost always still leave FB.

Check for the reason the seller chose to cancel the transaction, and if the seller falsely claimed that you requested the cancellation you can call eBay and point out the you did not want to cancel and the seller will get a defect.

If you let it ride there are no negative repercussions for the seller.