Ebay Seller cancelled Auction 2hours after aucton ended , What next for me?.

I would get a refund and leave negative feedback. Decline the cancellation of the transaction.

 

Decline it. I'll bet you he'll get pissed, well that's too bad.

 

You have messages from him saying he sold it outside eBay, which is against the rules. You also have messages changing his story, claiming it was damaged. Decline the cancellation, stating as your reason "seller informed me he sold item off eBay and couldn't cancel the listing, against eBay's rules - then changed his story to say it was damaged.". Report to eBay.

 

I actually had someone complain about the cost of posting something I sold for £1. Bearing in mind the postage cost includes packing and handling, he was even cheeky enough to suggest organising his own courier to pick it up (it was heavy). This was despite the cost of P&P being in the auction.

Don't get me started on people from another country bidding without asking for postage costs, even though I only include UK postage in the listing. After someone argued about postage costs and eventually threatening negative feedback if the postage cost more than he was charged, on something that he was getting for a steal, I actually refused to sell it to him. He then paid and I refunded, fortunately ebay took my side and refunded the fees.

It's not only sellers that can be douchebags on ebay. You only get a limited number of auction cancellations before you lose privileges on ebay, that includes non payment of things you bid on as well as refusing to sell.

 

You can actually select in the advance settings of your listing "block bidders from countries I do not ship to".

Its not as prominent as it should be, but the option is there.

 

I get stuck with moron sellers like this even when I've overpaid or paid their buy it now price!
Personally in this case, I might have insisted he send me the 'broken one' or just taken the free game then not left feedback, nothing lost and a free game out of it.

Not everyone on ebay is a dipshit thankfully
I won a broken 3DO a couple of weeks back for frankly more than I wanted to pay for a broken machine (like £20 plus postage) but ho hum, sometimes I get angry with the bid snipers.
Anyway, two hours after the end of the auction the seller sends me a message "i just went to pack it up, and noticed that there was a massive crack in the back which I hadn't noticed before, I'm happy to give you a refund in light of this and am sorry that I hadn't noticed it sooner." at this point I was thinking "damn this is going to be one of those items which sold for less than he wanted and I'm never going to receive" regardless I replied "I'm not too worried about the crack, I'm buying it as faulty anyway, call me a sucker for lost causes, would you be willing to offer small partial refund as a gesture of goodwill"
The next day, to my surprise he says "tell you what, how about I give it to you for a fiver plus the postage" Obviously I accepted and true to his word he refunded instantly and 4 days later my battered 3DO turned up. It was great I was so surprised and really pleased, the crack was fairly big and I'm not sure how he didn't notice it before the auction but to be honest I would have taken it for full price with the crack if he hadn't mentioned it. It always seems to me that a bit of overlooked cosmetic damage is fair game on an item listed as faulty to start with.

 

I know about the option, I never set it because I probably would ship to any country if they asked nicely. My postage charges are possibly a little on the high side at times, but I'll include full insurance for anything I ship as it's there to protect the seller not the buyer.

I had someone complain because I switched from Parcel Force Euro to FedEx Euro at the last minute because it was 20p cheaper and I thought FedEx might actually offer a better service. Although their complaint was more about that I used a comparison site and the label on the parcel included their logo. If I'd gone direct to either company then it would have cost me more than I quoted them. Some people are so worried about being ripped off they get paranoid about it. If you don't ask up front then it's your fault if it is more expensive than you expected to ship it.

I am a bit disappointed with eBay's seller ratings. Even if you charge less for postage than it costs you the buyer can actually rate you as poor for postage charges, you only avoid that by offering free postage & including it in the cost of the item. Unfortunately there is no way of rating ebay for whether their fees are acceptable apart from not using it (and enough people do use it that they wouldn't notice).

 

Best bit is that if you have a poor rating, eBay will start limiting your account e.g. not letting you take part in free listings days. They'll then expect you to get your ratings up by posting items for free.

eBay is becoming hugely biased against the seller.

 

The exact same thing happened to me a few weeks ago I posted about it in the posted about it in the "Dipshit eBay sellers... Share your story!" thread, except I allready paid, and 2 weeks pasts, seller allso could not provide any photo proof of the damage :/

Edit: If I was in the same country as the seller would have taken him to court as it is a legally binding contract, and no I am well aware that it will probably costs more than the goods are worth, but its just to prove a point, and get it on some news sites, to send a message to dipshit ebay sellers everywhere!!!

I think I can provide you with a bit of information regarding this, as I am, or atleast use to be a international ebay buyer.

For starters I dont bid or even look at sellers who dont list international prices or there auctions, this was up until mid last year pretty easy as all I needed to do was add "Only show listings available in: "South Africa"" ,this use to work about 95% every now and then a listing will creep in that didnt list my country, this wasnt really a problem as I could just check.

Middle last year both Ebay.co.uk and ebay.com removed this search parameter ,screwing over all international buyers, now we have to filter over 100s of listing to find maybe the hand full that ship internationally, and even then manually filter the results to find the ones that do ship to your country.

I have noticed that ebay sellers that do ship internationally and do list the correct selling prices, not only sell there items quicker but the auctions go for much larger amounts than those who dont, and its not much more effort from the sellers side just to fill in a customs declaration and charge a bit more for the shipping.

There is something you can do as a seller if you run into this again, recommend the buyer use a forwarding company there are tuns and a simple google search will help you to identify a few that ships to the sellers country, that is if they understand that it will cost more, and they will have to pay the forwarding company,just point them in the right direction, and let them do all the work for you.

Ebay now sucks, and I have allmost stopped ordering from ebay completely, now only doing amibay, and here, but its difficult as I have to constantly ask, "Do you ship to South Africa,if so whats the shipping" and it sucks even more when I have to cancel due to high prices, I hate doing it to sellers as they have done all the work on calculating the prices.

 

Yeah, three people complaining is enough to ruin your account for a year. You'll need to sell hundreds of items to get the percentage back within their range.

Getting low quotes on international postage takes a long time & it varies a lot for different countries. Even when I've spent half an hour finding the cheapest option I have still had complaints from people on the cost. In case of having to fill out a customs declaration (any country outside of the EU) they have always asked to mark the item down and promised that if it went missing then they wouldn't file a charge back (right). So while on some items I might have received a slightly higher value, I'm not sure it's worth spending all that extra time. I tend to list items for roughly what I would be happy to get for it & I'm quite realistic. I list items at a quarter of a price of items that people have been trying to sell for years. Oddly I'm more worried about losing out on the postage costs, while buyers ignore the bargain price they got the item for and are scared that I'm making a profit out of posting it.

 

I'm not exactly sure where eBay stands, if an item gets lost in the post. When there is an option for tracked shipping... If the buyer wanted standard post, that's the order. :/

 

Well you should never really mark a item down, its illegal, and you as a seller could allso be prosecuted, I dont ask for that as I know that customs here destroy any undervalue items or force you to pay a fine

Quotes are really easy to do though, just type in the dimensions of the box and its weight in parcelforce (UK) and its destination and you get the price, you need the dimensions and weight anyway to work and calculate local shipping anyway.

As for things getting lost, I can only speak out of experience, dont send anything that doesn't have tracking, if the item gets lost in the destination country ebay will side with you not the buyer , only happened once to me though, also keep proof of shipping as in a receipt just in case.

Just stick it into your T&C on the bottom

What I have found sometimes, is I pay a extremely high price for shipping $50 or more for a small box, ebay says the method is expedited so I expect to get it via Fedex or DHL only to find out the seller shipped it via USPS surface mail for $12 (thank goodness USPS has a price on it) and it takes 3 months to get to me, sadly there isnt anything I can do if that happens, but by the sound of things you dont do that sort of thing.

Things do go missing from time to time, I ordered somethings from Ape last year and I choose the cheaper shipping option, that didn't include tracking and it got lost, never forced him to pay as it was mu choice, but I can understand some other users (not on the site) but on ebay might think otherwise, on ebay I always ask for tracking, and if it goes missing or they cant give me tracking I ask for a receipt.

I guess its a case of risk over reward , but the risk can be minimized.

 

Well every item I list, I leave it up to the buyer to make the choice, since after they buy it, it's no longer my item.
The only thing I'd refund is the postage price, as that service wasn't completed. I've used a tracking number many times in the past, and stuff has still been lost! Reason why I leave it up to the buyer to want a tracking number, it's their money and I don't want to force it upon my customers.

 

Just bare in mind, that if you dont have a tracking number, and lose the receipt ebay will side with the buyer, and will force you to pay him back :/

 

Well that's rather stupid, since that's NOT what the buyer ordered. I have the option in the check out :/ I always keep receipt though.
Nothing has happened though, just hypothetical.

 

Tracking is NOT optional! It is required for protection on Ebay. There are buyers out there who wait for people to not use tracking, just to scam you, and you will lose every single time. You are required to make sure the item gets there, as stupid as it is. Ive run into issues (heck, see the NDSdemo who tried to scam me by refusing delivery).

 

It must be an error on eBay Australia then? Because there's an option for Standard post :/ this is what I'm getting at. Why eBay allow sellers to list things with standard post. It should be banned if that's the case. I have proof I sent the item by a receipt. Any many times in the past the tracking numbers don't get updated so I'd/we still be fucked either way.

I know on PayPal is says it's a good idea to post with tracking, but half the time tracking doesn't even work like it should. It's stupid. Just seems weird if you ask me. I'll surely not have standard post as an option any more...

 

Thats news to me, Ive ordered tuns of stuff from the US ebay, where they don't give me a tracking number, all I know is if it goes missing I ask for a receipt or proof of shipping, and if they cant provide it ebay sides with me :/ ,but then again if they provide me with proof, I ignore the matter and dont file anything with ebay, as the item was just lost in transit

How low does a person have to be to exploit it.

What happens if the seller shipped it with the option to send them a copy of the signature, that should be more than enough proof :/

 

even that might not be enough for some cases. i have seen times where the postman didn't check the id of the receiver. my wife's mother signed a lot of packages for me. hell, the postman might sign it himself/herself too.