Ebay Sellers Allowed to Cancel if not Satisfied with Sale.

You can still report them to ebay; negative feedback is just "revenge"; it is a good system; well thought out and Billion dollar profitiable; I could tell you ten POSITIVE stories for every complaint I hear....Like a friend from Montana who bought a Lincoln in North Caroliina and had a girlfriend go and pick it up.....upon realizing that fact, the seller took the car down and put NEW rear tires on the car;;he wanted to increase her chances of not having a flat tire driving the car 1800 miles alone...

 

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As with most things in life; eBay is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.
I've had so many great experiences there and never had a seller cancel a transaction without my approval 1st. But in both of those cases it was very obvious they just didn't want to sell the coins at that price. Even though I knew they were lying about having spent a pile of SLQ's, and about accidentally listing a CC morgan from his personal collection (which he sold again later). I told them to cancel, but beware because there are greater forces in this world than the all mighty dollar. Carma can be rough!

 

I cancelled a transaction once as soon as it was 'won', but it was because I had specified which countries I would ship to. The guy who won it had 'registered' on EBay in Great Britain, one of the countries I was shipping to, so he saw my item and was not prevented from bidding, but when he won my item, he had it for me to ship to Thailand or Burma or someplace. I wouldn't ship there, so I cancelled his sale, gave a second offer to someone else, and ebay refunded me the sellers fees on the first transaction and then took sellers fees on the second. So it was ok by them.

I think it's all well and good for all buyers to say a seller should never cancel a sale no matter what, but you don't know the circumstances. Sellers are really not in the habit of giving away their product. So, say there was an uncirculated 1932 D Washington Quarter up for sale and the seller started it at 1 cent to get it going (really common practice on ebay and ebay likes those, because usually the item then gets what it is worth, or more... at the very least it usually encourages a lot of bidders who might not bid normally on it, especially if it was started higher or had a reserve on it). One person bids on it, and then waits for the auction to end. But say, during that time, the other bidders or possible bidders are stuck in a situation where they normally go and snipe bid and for the time hours before the end of the auction, that is unavailable because of a grid failure (guess what, it happens) or server issue with their sniping service and no bids can come through for that and other some other auctions. Do you really expect a seller to let it go for someone's bid of say, 1 cent (because one bidder started and did not wait to snipe) and free shipping? I really don't think anyone of you would let that happen if you were the seller. So you have to consider the circumstances.

And there are too many times that mistakes are made or products do disappear or get hurt between the sale and packaging. Another one I sold I had to not go through with as sold because I had set it up on a shelf while getting ready to package it. One of my cats decided to jump up there and the cat split the item enough. I contacted the person I sold it to and informed them of that, that it was not going to be. Unfortunate, because it was an older unusual photograph (large, curved one) and it would not have been repairable to a regular collector.

And I've had one transaction cancelled on me. Where a book valued at over 20.00 was being 'offered' at less than 4.00 with free shipping. I was not really upset because it was a BIN and I was really suspect of the price, but the seller then did turn around and relist at a price around 25.00 each, and so those books which were said were unavailable magically became available for sale within hours and for a better price. But I can understand why he wouldn't want to honor the sales to the ones who purchased them at the lower price. Basically he would have almost been giving away his stock for free or close to it. And Ebay puts him in a bind because he can't just say to them it was because he didn't want to lose money or product.

I have some items up on ebay right now that are listed ridiculously low or somewhat low, but those I am testing to see if they do get me better than I would expect if I put a more 'accurate' starting price. These I am actually willing to ship regardless, because it might cost me not too much loss on it and I think the possible rewards are high enough on at least a couple of them to mitigate it. I will see. It may determine if I am less risk-adverse on eBay than I normally am.

 

Just a point on cancelling an auction..you do NOT have the option to put the REAL reason for cancelling an auction, you must choose from 3 or 4 options that Ebay provides. One is Not "the dog ate it" or "my wife donated it to a friend, etc"!

 

I have been buying and selling items on eBay since 1998. All totaled I have personally sold over 10,000 various collectibles, coins, stamps, postcards, books, photographs, sport cards, comics, etc and currently have 3750+ positive feedback, no negatives. At the moment I have over 150 items in my eBay store and I would love to see them all sell. Over that 17 year period I have only canceled 3 sales.

One was a 1875-s slabbed 20 cent piece, ($110.) that somehow got lost in my stack of stuff and still hasn't turned up. Another was a RPC, (Real Photo Postcard), of a PRR Steam Engine that I spilled a glass of water on when I was packing it for shipping. And another was a Batman comic book that I accidentally ripped the cover off when I was putting it into a plastic bag for shipment. Each time the buyer completely understood what happened, but because each item was unique I could not substitute anything else to complete the sale.

I do not play games when offering items for sale, although I have had my share of shady buyers trying to get over on me. My shipping charges are clearly stated for each item regardless of whether it is a Buy It Now, or an Auction. I always combine shipping as it is only good business to do so.

When I buy things, which I frequently do, I avoid the slick sellers, and stick to guys who have been around a while and understand the process. As has been said, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."