eBay

divertigeek · ‎05-18-2015

In the last few months I had this happen to me 3 times, I win an item (often at a low price, I'll admit, but hey, it's an auction site right?), and the seller just plain up cancel the item AFTER I PAID, I get my money back and a nice message from eBay telling me the seller doesn't have the item anymore (yeah right) ... at least 2 of them I saw back at auction.

Is there anything that can be done about that or I should just give up bidding on items starting low?

femmefan1946 · ‎05-19-2015

Ebay recently introduced a program that allows buyers or sellers to cancel a transaction very quickly after the purchase.

This is in addition to the older, slower Mutual Cancellation process that has been around for decades.

I guess I can see why it was introduced, basically to speed up the ending of transactions that just were not going to happen, but frankly it will always leave one person in the transaction very very annoyed.

And your sellers were being particularly stupid.

Not only did they not know how high your maximum bid was, only what the high bid that won was, but they set themselves up for failure by starting their items lower than the price they would be content to get.

What to do?

Well, eBay apparently has removed the restriction on making Best Offers when the seller did not offer that option. (Another stupid idea, but...).

So if you see something you like, you could make an offer that is a reasonable price (don't forget to allow for shipping and import fees) and see what happens.

Since you are not getting the bottom end bargain prices, nothing to lose here.

You could Report the sellers when they relist the 'lost' items, although this is unlikely to be useful unless you can show that the offered item was unique. Which does not include anything that was ever mass manufactured.

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-19-2015

If you receive a cancellation request in a situation like that, don't agree and don't ignore it. If you disagree with the cancellation, the seller will get a defect for cancelling it. That is how it is supposed to work although things don't always work like they should. It's unlikely that you will get the item but at least the seller will be penalized and ebay will be aware that there was a problem.

reallynicestamps · ‎05-19-2015

pjcdn-- But do sellers (or buyers) have any penalties with this new immediate cancellation option? I haven't seen anything about it, except complaints from those who did want the transaction to proceed.

But then, I'm terrible at catching up with the announcements.

I can visualize situations where the canceller should be penalized (this one, where the seller seems to have lied about availability) and those where she shouldn't (double ordering an item by accident).

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-19-2015

A buyer can request a cancellation within an hour after purchase if the item hasn't been shipped and of course that doesn't give a seller a defect.

I'm not sure what immediate cancellation you are referring to when the seller initiates it. In theory, if an item hasn't been shipped and the seller refunds and cancels the order, a defect is given unless the seller indicates that the cancellation was initiated by the buyer. But if the seller says that the cancellation was buyer initiated and it was actually seller initiated, I'm not sure if the buyer still gets a chance to disagree with the cancellation like they did before. In my mind they should be able to but I don't actually know if that is what happens.

maximus7001 · ‎05-21-2015

Hopefully the negs will teach those sellers a valuable lesson.

divertigeek · ‎05-23-2015

PJ, I couldn't agree or disagree to the cancellation, I was just informed it was cancelled and refunded. That's what **bleep** me off the most, the fact that apparently there's now an option for any seller to just straight up cancel a transaction like that, with no apparent action taken against him except the fact that we can leave a negative (big wow, who really considers the feedback nowadays (except maybe when there's a ton of neg out there, but one here, one there, who cares? Free cancellation if your item don't sell for the price you want ... )

reallynicestamps · ‎05-23-2015

That an unhappy customer can leave a negative is a bid deal for most sellers, with the exception of the mega-sellers with hundreds of thousands of feedback, hundreds of negs, and still keeping a rating of 98% or better.

More important are the Detailed Seller Ratings.

If a seller's Ratings drop to 4.3, his fees may rise, his ability to list or sell is restricted, the number and value of his listings may be restricted, or his account may be closed temporarily or permanently.

A normal Rating is Five Stars, since anything lower hurts the seller.

The lowest Rating is ONE Star.

No rating is a free pass.

The DSRs are the venue to show your unhappiness that will have an effect.

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-23-2015

PJ, I couldn't agree or disagree to the cancellation, I was just informed it was cancelled and refunded.

Could you see the reason given for the cancellation? If a seller uses the reason that the 'buyer changed mind/problem with the address' the seller doesn't get a defect. You would think that if they use that as a reason the buyer should be asked to agree or disagree. It's not a good thing if that isn't happening.

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-23-2015

@reallynicestamps wrote:
That an unhappy customer can leave a negative is a bid deal for most sellers, with the exception of the mega-sellers with hundreds of thousands of feedback, hundreds of negs, and still keeping a rating of 98% or better.
More important are the Detailed Seller Ratings.
If a seller's Ratings drop to 4.3, his fees may rise, his ability to list or sell is restricted, the number and value of his listings may be restricted, or his account may be closed temporarily or permanently.

A normal Rating is Five Stars, since anything lower hurts the seller.
The lowest Rating is ONE Star.
No rating is a free pass.

The DSRs are the venue to show your unhappiness that will have an effect.

With the defect system the only DSR's that seem to matter are the Shipping Time DSR and the Description DSR. A seller gets a defect if given a 1 in shipping time and a 1, 2 or 3 for Item Description. As far as I know, there is nothing in the rules anymore about a 4.3 rating hurting a seller....it is all based on percentage of defects.