[geeks] ebay

[kevin at pipeline.com]

It is allowable as far as eBay itself is concerned, almost entirely because they have no way of enforcing any rule otherwise.

It is, and should always be, allowable to cancel an auction if the item is no longer available (broken, stolen and so on) or if you made a mistake during the initial listing.  Aside from this, it is VERY poor practice and is not looked upon well at all.  If eBay could disallow it, they would, but people would always just say that the item was broken or something similar and eBay would obviously have no way to actually verify that.

If it is done in order to sell it via an outside deal, that is technically "fee avoidance" and against eBay's terms.  Here eBay is going on teh assumption that your outside buyer found your item via eBay and thus you are using eBay for marketing purposes only and avoiding Final Value Fees.  Once again though, no way to prove this.

You can file a complaint if you'd like.  eBay has very recently made some changes to their seller standards where if a seller gets a certain number of complaints within a specified time frame, there will be repercussions to some degree.

It sucks, but there are jackasses out there who do stuff like this when they see that their item may sell for much less than they had anticipated.

/KRM

-----Original Message-----
>From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>
>Sent: Aug 16, 2007 12:45 PM
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] ebay
>
>Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>> Is it proper for a seller to cancel all bids and end auction early
>>> if they get an outside offer?  I had a bid in on an item and the
>>> seller canceled my bid and ended the listing.  I'm a tad miffed.  I
>>> was going to get a good price.
>> 
>> Cancelling an auction in process is acceptable (to me as a buyer, I'm
>> not familiar with eBay's actual policy). If I, as a seller, made a
>> mistake in posting the listing (forgot reserve, minimum bid too low,
>> etc.), I should have the right to cancel it after the auction starts
>> - shouldn't I? Did this occur in the last hour of the auction or in
>> the middle of the auction?
>
>About 6 hours from the end of the auction.
>
>It was an as-is auction.  Obviously not a mistake.
>
>Peace...  Sridhar
>_______________________________________________
>GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks


I'll be moving from the US to Japan by October 2007 and most of my possessions MUST BE SOLD, as it is too costly to ship them to the other side if the planet :)

So keep checking the KRM eBay Store between now and mid-late September and you might come up on some pretty nice bargains on all kinds of different stuff.

The KRM eBay Store!
http://stores.ebay.com/krm-corner-store_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZQ2d999QQftidZ2QQtZkm


Kevin R. Marshall   :   kevin at pipeline.com   :   305-801-5748