advice re / cancelling a sale

[cutie.loves.beauty]

hi, 1st of all I know that this is my fault , I should of been paying attention to the listing. But I accidentally lowered the price of a lot pretty drastically (60 to 30) and forgot I had free shipping on. Given that its a lot t will cost me at least $15 to ship. I no longer wish to go through with the sale. Can somebody please help me with how I can communicate this? I feel embarassed I have to do this but this lot is worth way more to me than $15 and Id be dumb to let it go for that. I know one of you will probably say I should just go through with the sale since its my bad, but I just cannot this time.

[ricarmic]

My advice is to think of the big picture. Ebay "cares not" about negative feedbacks, but they care a lot about defects. You cancelling the sale because of your pricing mistake will cause you to have a defect.

You can't afford many (almost any) of those with your sales volume (assuming this is your main account) or you'll get punished in $$$ and visibility way much beyond the $$ you're not making on this item. At least you are still making something, it could be much worse!

Losing future sales and paying higher fees will have a much more negative impact than the lack of income on this item.

It won't be a good lesson to learn the hard way, it is good that you've put this out here before you cancelled the transaction.....

[cutie.loves.beauty]

Can you please explain the defect thing to me? Or drop me a link? I keep reading that word in posts but I dont know what it means or how it works?

How do I find out if I have a defect(s)? I did not know there was penalties in place for cancelling for good reasons. I always try to convince the buyer to agree to me pressing "buyer asked to cancel" because I read its looked down upon to cancel using other options.

Does it change anything for the better doing if I go about doing it that way?

Also your right, at least Im not making nothing in the end=)

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

eBay does not have any form of price error protection for sellers.

Ignoring any opinions on what the "right" thing to do is ethically, because that will differ from person to person, here is what you need to know about how cancelling the order may affect your account.

You can cancel the order due to the item being out of stock or damaged. eBay will issue you a defect. If you accrue too many defects, eBay will penalize you or take action against your account. You can find detailed information about that here: https://www.ebay.ca/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy?id=4347

You will likely receive a negative feedback from the buyer. eBay does not evaluate accounts based on feedback. Feedback is only there to inform future buyers of the experience that past buyers had, but the way eBay is now set up it is difficult for buyers to view feedback or make anything of it. Most people will tell you that unless it is a very expensive purchase, or the buyer has a very low feedback number, they never view feedback. 

If you choose to cancel, I do not know if eBay would take action against you if you re-listed the item and the buyer reported you for re-listing it after claiming it was out of stock.

If you do choose to cancel, I would send a polite message to the buyer and just be honest about what happened and why you have to cancel. The buyer would be in the right to be upset, and would be in the right to leave you a negative feedback - but most people would probably be understanding. It would be different if this was an auction or something since you would have known the risks going in. A genuine price error is what it is. 

[reallynicestamps]

Defects can mean higher fees, because there are "penalty" fees added to those you already pay. Usually the penalty is an additional 5%.

Defects can also mean being dropped from TRS programs which have lower fees as a perk.

Defects can mean lower visibility in Search

Defects can mean restrictions on the number and value of your listings.

Defects can mean that you cannot use Promoted Listings.

And enough Defects can mean eBay ends your selling privileges permanently.

 On all your accounts.

Defects are Bad News.

Ship and save.

You may find this useful.

[dobo5250]

what ever you do try not to cancell take the hit of money a defect that will come of it will cost you more money -- i recently did the exact same thing with a bunch of game boys selling at 600 dollars by mistake instaed of discounting them 20 % i dicounted them 65% precent  due to the fact that the word pokemon was in the title and i had bulk discount all pokemon item 65% it got tagged by mistake -- it was snapped up as soon as it was listed and i lost 230 dollars becuase i did't want another strike which is now costing me about 8/9% extra fees now up to 25% cost of sale  to ebay ia already so i took the hit -- still trying to get that score under 2.0% so i can go back to 15-18 % selling rate 

my advice is take the hit or at least email the customer and explain maybe they will be kind and remove their offer and then give him the best discount you can afford  -- if not-- then just ship and move on   take two pill or gummies --you will feel better in the morning 

[msau4301]

You already have great advice here! There's one thing I'll add based on what happened to me when I made a similar mistake. I had used a "sell similar" and forgot to change the price which sadly was about a third of what I wanted to sell item for for. I just left it be (figured it was my mistake I had to), took the loss and on the bright side the customer who bought the item became a regular and has been buying from me for the past seven years. Ended up being well worth the initial hit!

[byto253]

It sucks, we have all done it to some extent or the other.  Myself, it is my error and I fulfill the deal I offered and the buyer gets a good deal.  Cost of doing business, stuff happens, you suck it up and move on. 

For me cancelling is not worth it, it does not take that many defects to become an issue and I like as much buffer as possible. 

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

I'd go with the advices you have already received... proceed with the sale and take the loss this time to protect your account from defects.