Ebay Sellers Allowed to Cancel if not Satisfied with Sale.

Last night I seen an ebay seller with a bunch of .99 auctions. I emailed him to ask if he combined shipping to cost. He replied that he would. So I won a bunch of slabbed coins under $5 each. Nothing special, just some cheap coins to stock my store. Then I get an invoice for $11 1st class shipping. I told the seller to ship in a small flat rate priority for around $5. He now tells me I got such a good deal, and I shouldn't be complaining. I told him politely that I will pay the $11 and I did.
I just got an email from ebay refunding my $ and saying the transaction was canceled because "he ran out of stock". Ebay did not ask, they just canceled. I had no idea ebay allows sellers to cancel auctions if they aren't happy with the sale price. One would think that is Fraud?

I will not be inquiring about combining shipping before placing bids any longer. If the cost is inflated I will leave a 1 star dsr. If you double charge shipping on coins, you should expect that anyway. If the only way you can profit as a coin dealer is on handling fees then you are doing something wrong.

 

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Guy decided negative fb was worth it considering his financial losses, I guess. Wow...

 

What is his username? If you don't want to post it, PM me. I like to keep track of such sellers.

 

I don't know how the exchange about the combined shipping went, but it may have been a case where the seller got a feeling that he was going to get a neg anyway for not agreeing to a low enough amount to satisfy the buyer with the shipping charges. In that case, if the seller thought it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, then don't. At least that way you keep your wares.

I've said this countless times before, but when buyers bid on an auction they are agreeing to whatever shipping terms are stipulated by the seller. Unless the seller specifically states they will combine shipping, you can't just assume it. And when they do state they will combine shipping, the buyer needs to ask BEFOREHAND what the combined shipping charges will be. Also, from how you worded the comments above, it sounds like you wanted the seller to ship to you for only the cost of postage. However, in the last paragraph of your post you mention "handling." Keep in mind that those charges are for shipping AND handling. That means the actual stamp price, packaging materials, etc. Sellers shouldn't have to lose money on shipping and handling, yet buyers routinely leave poor ratings for shipping charges just because the amount they paid was more than the postage.

 

This happened to me.. Got one to cheap. Not my fault that no one else bid on it.
I was really ticked that he could just cancel. No rime or reason.
Why do we have minimums and reserve's??? If we allow this to happen.

 

You CAN"T leave feedback on a cancelled sale....

 

I've been selling on Ebay for years and I've only had to cancel one sale. It was an inexpensive minor Lincoln Cent variety, but when it came time to ship the item I couldn't find it anywhere. I had it at my desk at the time of listing because I took the photos of it, but when I went to grab it, it was gone. I still have no idea what happened to that coin. I think I may have accidentally sent it out with another shipment. The bottom line is that there are sometimes circumstances involved that have nothing to do with the price of the item.

Also keep in mind that a lot of these sellers who sell cheap slabs buy them for pennies on the dollar and they flip them for a few bucks, so it's not necessarily the fact that he cancelled them because he would be losing money.

Another caveat is that Ebay will not allow a seller to cancel a single item on an order; they have to cancel the entire order. I'm not sure how this applies to multiple orders that are combined into one, but it could have been that he had problems with fulfilling a single item but Ebay forced him to cancel the entire transaction.

 

I've been a repeat buyer from a particular seller. I won 3 items from him recently that closed on the same day. I paid for each individually. He charges a small fee for shipping. When he shipped my coins, he put them together and gave me a small shipping refund.

I'm sorry this seller chose to cancel the sales. To me, that's bush league. If you start an auction as no reserve starting at $0.99, then you should sell the coin no matter the end result.

I've only sold one item on eBay. I started the auction as no reserve, $0.99 and free shipping. There was only 1 bidder. I ended up losing on the sale, but I shipped the item.

 

I've also seen it go the other way. Buyer refuses to pay the auction so I report to eBay and they rebate my FVF (Final Value Fee) but once that is done I cannot leave negative feedback to the buyer so what's the point? I guess you have to leave the negative first before you request a refund...

 

It's only one instance. Maybe you are overreacting.
And besides, your new strategy doesn't really have any benefit for yourself.

 

They will remove your negative feedback....do you really...oh forget It

 

It's news to me that a seller is allowed to unilaterally cancel at all. I thought they had to request a mutual cancellation which the buyer could refuse.

The only exception to this seemed to be if the buyer resided somewhere the seller had specified as not shipping to.

Some new seller update I have not seen?

 

There's just no reasonable way to force a seller to send the goods and it's not really ebay's job to do that anyways.

 

There's just no reasonable way to force a seller to send the goods and it's not really ebay's job to do that anyways.

That is not the same a making it easy to renege. Sanctions were 'Non Performing Seller' reports and appropriate FB.

 

OK, how would you make it hard to reneg?
And why assume the seller in this case has perfect feedback?

 

I just had a cancellation on my bid for a roll of steel cents. Seller said they were all gone and he did not realize he was out. Fair enough, I'll give the benefit of the doubt. At my age I don't invite, encourage or deal with confrontation, life is too short.

 

Used to be that way but the rules are constantly changing. Perhaps this falls under the resolution process whereby a seller can initiate the resolution instead of the normal end auction/sale early? I would imagine someone with a physical storefront in addition to their virtual storefront could sell an item and then it also sells on Ebay and they have to go in and correct their virtual storefront and it just overlaps each other.

 

It has been that way for many, many years...common sense still prevails I

 

You can't ever leave negative feedback on a buyer. That was the single biggest factor that turned me into an ex-seller. They made that change back around 2008 or so!