The subject says it all.
I found a couple of Buy It Now auctions yesterday for some rare items, purchased, and paid. Today the seller canceled the orders saying “out of stock / damaged”
In further communication, the seller said that they made a deal with a local buyer and hadn’t taken down the eBay listings.
Rude? Faux-pas? Happens all the time? Against eBay policy?
Kind of bummed that I missed out, but not enough to make any stink over it.
The same sort of thing happened to me several years ago. I was not happy. That was one of the contributing factors to my not using eBay anymore.
My understanding is that this will impact the seller’s statistics and if they do it enough it will negatively impact their ability to sell, but it’s not against the rules.
You can definitely leave a poor rating, though.
I would leave the lowest rating possible.
StG
I’ve done this a scant couple of times as a seller and it left me seriously embarrassed but there was literally nothing I could do. Both were items of clothing I’d had on eBay and Poshmark, both had been posted sitting idly for quite a while. One had JUST sold within hours on eBay when a Posher requested it (it just slipped my mind to remove from Posh) and the other had been sold a while back on eBay and I was convinced I’d removed from Posh but it wasn’t so. Thankfully, the jilted buyers were nice about it.
There’s so many channels for selling stuff now - SO many - that it is very tempting for sellers to post everywhere. Especially since the pictures are in your phone and stuff just sits and doesn’t sell, at no cost to you, why not get maximum exposure? Even Facebook, when you post an item for sale in one group, pushes you to cross-post your item in every single group possible. Shitty move by Facebook.
Anyway, it happens to the best of us. Not cool, and like I said I’ve only done it a few times as a regular “cleaning out my house” kinda seller. Much worse if it’s a “eBay is my job” seller. I’d give them a pass on a human mistake, though.
ETA: If you can give them a low rating on this transaction, do so. Just don’t go haywire on eBay making demands.
Mistakes happen. Inventory gets mismarked and misplaced and sold. It doesn’t seem like there’s a likely malicious motive here, just a clerical error.
I’ve gone to physical stores to buy something and had them come out and say “Sorry, the inventory system shows we have three, but I can’t find any on the shelf”. It’s a minor inconvenience at best.
I don’t know that I’d give someone negative feedback for this. Maybe neutral? Like, you didn’t really lose out on anything except a small amount of your time.
This is happening a lot with the trading card industry. The current market for cards is going way up (lots of quarantined people longing for their days of youth watching actual sports on TV and collecting cards). This results in a lot of shady sellers pulling their sales when they realize that the market for any particular card has dramatically increased since their last sale. Really shitty.
I’m not planning on leaving negative feedback; I simply sent a note saying “it shouldn’t have been for sale on eBay if it was for sale elsewhere” and left it at that.
If they did it maliciously (these are rare items, kind of like the trading card scenario), then they are a jerk and there’s not much I can do to change that. If they did it accidentally (they have a few dozen sales only), I’m cool with letting it slide.
I will remember it, however. Just like the one seller who I bought some items from but they were in pretty rough shape–not bad enough to be misrepresented, but other collectors take better care of their stuff. I just don’t buy from that individual anymore.
This isnt so bad, but super annoying. The ones I hate is when you are the high bidder and the seller cancels all the bids at the last moment as he isnt getting the price he wanted. That’s the auction biz, bub.
In point of fact, isn’t the behavior you noted “the auction biz” ?
That’s not what he’s talking about. You can set a Reserve Price on eBay, and if that reserve is not met, the seller is not obligated to sell to the high bidder. Cancelling an auction right before it’s over because the price isn’t as high as you wanted is shitty. The seller is trying to game the system by not actually adding a reserve price, yet treating the auction as if it had one. (I think you may have to pay extra to add a reserve, and it also tends to keep bidders away.)
Of course, that seems a bizarre move for the seller to make since often times there will be no bids on an item and then within those last few seconds the price shoots way up.
No, not unless they actually use a Reserve price, which eBay notes.
If there is no reserve price- then- now I know this might be hard to understand- then there is no reserve price.
what i hate is a lot of businesses like thrift stores and especially video game stores and such will sell an item in the store and post it online at the same time and its "first come first serve " it got to the point where i called the place before trying to buy it online
I’ve listed an item at several places but I include this in my listing “Cross posted in other selling sites”. It just lets people email me and ask if something is still available or if they don’t, they don’t have any reason to be irritated because I let them know up front. It just wasn’t good selling practice in my opinion.
In the specific example I gave, reserve price is not relevant: the seller listed them as “Buy It Now” so they weren’t auctions. With that said, it seems to me to be a pretty big loophole for backing out of a sale if you change your mind. Fine if it was an honest mistake; otherwise a sneaky move.
Why not? Isn’t this the equivalent of putting a For Sale sign in front of your house and also listing it in the Sunday real estate ads and on the local Multi-List? I would not assume that any particular venue is the ONLY venue through which somebody is trying to sell anything.
I once won an eBay auction and immediately paid the seller via PayPal. I was patient, but after some time of zero contact from the seller I got concerned and sent an email. The seller apologized, explaining that his room-mate had used his account to list the item, they’d had a falling out, and he’d moved away.
I wanted my money, and the seller agreed to return it to me via PayPal. Once he figured out how to do it, I was notified by PayPal that I’d received money. However it was the amount I’d paid minus PayPal’s fee.
I was angry, he was as well. He thought I was trying to take money from him and he eventually argued with eBay about it. I eventually got back my dollar and change.