Well, this sucks!
I recently placed a bid on an item–above the reserve price listed by the seller. A few hours before the auction was supposed to end, the seller cancelled it. No reason was provided, other than “seller wishes to cancel auction early.”
Apparently, canceling an auction is acceptable under eBay guidelines.
Why? Isn’t the whole purpose of an auction defeated if a seller can simply cancel if the bid isn’t high enough?
Please explain.
The seller was a weenie. It happens.
You should, of course, buy only from reputable eBayers. Like me. 
Sellers are allowed to cancel, but if they do it too often, they’ll lose their account.
Complain to eBay. They’ll investigate, and if the seller has done this often before, they’ll have their account revoked.
Mr Cazzle is a big eBayer, and often submits complaints about people he thinks aren’t playing by the rules. He’s busted quite a few of the eBay version of socks - “shillers”.
Sometimes people have legitimate reasons for cancelling - Mr Cazzle cancelled one auction when he discovered a flaw in the item near the end of the auction. Also, some people will hesitate about a winning bidder who has a low rating.
Uh oh, something else to worry about at e bay!! I’m a ‘newbie’ at e bay, and so far my experience has been great… so I’ve not witnessed anyone pulling out of an auction. I can see why there might be a reason to do so, but as has been stated, since there is feedback forum (I’ve just discovered this, people make comments about you, even if you’ve only been a buyer!) you’re treading thin ice if you do it more than once or twice.
Did you write a complaint on that seller’s feedback?? Don’t neglect that for the rest of us who check to see how faithful they are to their merchandise, shipping, and transaction ease.
DON’T hate all of e bay, just make faces at that particular seller! 
Yeah, I had this happen once. I normally check someone’s feedback before I buy from them. Sometimes ebay cancels the auction if the seller is violating a rule (there was some type of copyright infraction in my case).
The plus is that ebay seems to crack down pretty fast on folks. I had a problem with a seller and when I went in to leave negative feedback, his account had been shut down due to an issue with another customer.
If you’d like, you can always find out the seller’s email and send a message asking why the auction was canceled.
FYI, Anti Pro, you can’t make comments about someone in feedback unless you’ve either bought or sold something from/to them (in other words, a seller can only receive feedback from the winning buyer, not from all the bidders; and a buyer only gets feedback if s/he actually purchases an item).
I have had good luck both as a buyer and a seller.
I have never pulled an auction. However I can see a reason for doing it if an item is dicsovered to not be exactly as advertized before a sale is complete.
I have had relatively good luck selling. Only had 2 buyers pull out after they won, but in both cases I ended up selling the item for more money afterwards.
I think last year I made nearly 1k in auctions of stuff I had laying around.
One thing I learned the hard way:
DO NOT buy things from people who email you to say that you bid on their auction # such & so and they have another of the same item available that they’ll sell you for the same price as the winning bid of the item you originally bid on. (Yes, it’s a run-on sentance. Sue me.)
This happened to me, once, and, since it was a rare CD that I really wanted, I said “Okay” and sent him my money order. I never received the CD. Turns out that he wasn’t even the same person I originally bid from - just a guy who saw my name on that auction and e-mailed me. I had no recourse from eBay since it was not a sanctioned eBay transaction, and they couldn’t even kill the guy’s account since I didn’t know what it was (if he even had one.)
E-Bay warns its users not to do this.
I’ve just been buying on e-bay, and only a few items. Only one seller was a problem – it took her several months to get me my item, but eventually it did get to me.
It’s also great for research.
Isn’t solicitation of sales a violation of ebay policy?
If you want a scary ebay story, you should hear some of the comments on a Titanic list I belong to. A fraud was running a phony Titanic gown seamstress business, and numerous ebay scams as well. This person keeps coming up with new ebay accounts, what not.
My impression is the seller simply wimped out because I got the item for a song–and s/he took a bath. That’s really bad form. Worse, there’s no way for me to leave negative feedback, since I didn’t have the chance to actually purchase it.
In this case, eBay rigs it in the seller’s favor.
What, make run-on sentances? 
Seriously, though, I’ve only had trouble once on eBay. I was selling a guitar. The auction ended, and I sent an email to the high bidder. A few days later she hadn’t responded, so I sent another. Finally she sent me an email…and accussed me of not sending her any emails! I sent an email back to her…a few days later she sent another email saying she wasn’t going to pay if I didn’t respond. ‘WTF?’ I said. So I sent another email, but this time from my school account and not my excite one. She got that email. For some reason her AOL email account rejected all my previous emails…go figure. I actually had this problem before on eBay but as a buyer, I didn’t get someone’s email until I sensed there might be problems and sent them an alternate email.
Anyways…i sent out the guitar using the address she provided after I got her money order (which was VERY late.) Assuming everything went well, I left it alone. Almost a month later she sends an email saying she hadn’t gotten the guitar, and to nevermind anyways bnecause she bought a different one. She also demanded her money back or she would get her lawyer involved. ‘WTF?’ I said again.
I checked UPS and apparantly the guitar didn’t get shipped becuse of a wrong address. I emailed her telling her this and she said,
“Oops…I gave you my OLD address…sorry.”
Christ. Well, within the next two days the UPS people got smart and traced the address to her and shipped it to her new address. They did all of this without contacting me whatsoever, BTW, that pissed me off. So she has the guitar now. She says she still wants to send it back and get her money back, and she will pay for re-shippig herself and lose money on it. Fine, I say. I send her back a money order and guess what…no guitar. I sent the money order back in JANUARY (I first mailed the guitar towards the end of November.) No guitar for me. I just said ‘fuck it.’ Overall, between the original price I paid for the guitar, shipping being twice as much as I thought, and then sending back the money she paid for it, I lost over $130 dollars…plus a guitar. During this fiasco she also gave me negative feedback. I naturally did the same back to her.