Can a seller cancel an order after it has been negotiated and paid for?

[davstewar-27]

Hello all,

Here's the situation...
I have paid (C $273.39) for an item from a seller and have now received an email from the seller that they are not able to fulfil the order. The excuse is that they have "ran out of stock in Canada". They are now asking me if they can cancel the order and give me a full refund. That wording leaves me to believe I may have some leverage (Perhaps not, I don't know.)

Are there any obligations of the seller to give me the item I paid for? I can wait a longer time for them to restock the item and fulfil the deal (I would be willing to be patient).

What's more interesting (and angers me more) is that the item is still on eBay, but they have dramatically increased the price to C $1,093.58 (from the C $273.39 I already paid for.). This leaves me to believe that they DO have the item in stock and have now back peddled due to the price.

Any assistance or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[momcqueen]

The short answer is, 'Yes, the seller can but they're really not supposed to do that'.

Cancelling your order because they've run out of stock will get the seller a black mark on their selling record with ebay; ebay frowns on disappointing buyers as you have been with this situation.

It's unfair to you but there is NOTHING that you can do at this point but accept the refund and leave appropriate feedback. 

To allow the transaction to linger in the hopes the item might come back in stock (and be honoured at your original price) simply increases the chance you will lose your money as well as your hope for the item you wanted. If this seller wanted to jerk you around, he'd have shipped a similar object and then made you return it as part of a big song-and-dance to avoid getting into trouble with ebay. That would have wasted your time and tied up your money. At least this doesn't.

As it stands, the seller will get into some hot water with ebay over this, and you will get your money back to try again with another seller who is hopefully better organized than the one you're dealing with now.

I wish you sincerest better luck with the next seller.

[pjcdn2005]

What's more interesting (and angers me more) is that the item is still on eBay, but they have dramatically increased the price to C $1,093.58 (from the C $273.39 I already paid for.).

What is an average price for this item? If it usually closer to the higher price than they might just be trying to cover that they priced it too low. But it is also possible that they ran out of stock and because they don't want to lose their sales history, they temporarily put the price really high so that no one would buy it.

If you haven't replied to them yet, I would write something like...Please refund me since you are out of stock.   

Sellers are supposed to be get a defect when cancelling an item that has already sold but I suspect that some sellers try to avoid that by asking the buyer if they want to cancel.  That might not be the case here and I don't know if it even works but I would probably try to avoid using the wording that you agree to the cancellation.

[pierrelebel]

These things happen from time to time.  The seller runs out of stock and cannot deliver.  It is always best to assume it is an honest mistake.

Yes, you should ask the seller to refund your payment.  Now, be careful.  If you paid in Canadian funds, let the seller know exactly how much you paid and request a full refund for the same Canadian dollar amount.

Good Luck.

[reallynicestamps]

the item is still on eBay, but they have dramatically increased the price to C $1,093.58 (from the C $273.39

The seller is dropshipping.

He never had any stock and his (overseas) supplier is out of stock.

If you see the same item, usually with the same description word for word and the same pictures, those listings are from other dropshippers. They are out of stock too. They just don't know it yet.

The huge price rise is some weird idea dropshippers have that if they raise the price ridiculously high, no one will buy.

But what's the point? They can't sell it because they don't have it and they can't get it so why advertise it?

Dropshippers are lazy and dumb.