After paying, seller contacted me outside of ebay via personal email to request I cancel the order

[rtwcollector]

A few days ago I won an auction and I paid for the item within 48 hours. 11 hours after paying, I received an email from the seller using my personal email address that was attached to the paypal receipt (the seller has avoided contacting me using eBay messages). In this email, the seller says they have sold the item elsewhere and forgot to take down the listing and would like me to cancel the order. I replied that I understand if they need to cancel the order and that they will need to do this, not me. It's been three days and I have not heard back from the seller and the status of my purchase has still not changed - that I paid for the product and the seller is yet to ship the product.

I sent the seller an eBay message this morning requesting the status of the order. To be reasonable, I think I would have to give the seller at least 48 hours to reply (or maybe 72?). But what do I do if they continues not to reply after they sent me that email requesting that I cancel my order?

To clarify, I'm not going to cancel the order myself.

Any advice with how to handle this? Do I wait until the expected shipping date has passed before contacting eBay about the issue?

I have an email chain (the seller's one email and my one email from outside of eBay) that I can forward to a customer care address so they can verify what has happened (if the seller has used the email address that is attached to their eBay account).

Thanks for the help!

Note: This person is an individual seller, not numerous people or a business

[springyzone]

I think what you did-sending an ebay message to ask for clarification of the status of your order, was exactly the right thing to do.

If the seller wishes to cancel, then they should send you a cancellation request.

If they send such a request via ebay, if I were you I would accept it as long as they have ticked it as seller choice.

I don't believe that you should have to wait 72 hours for a reply. Those days have gone. I'd expect a reply within 48 hours. You have already waited 3 days since your last message, after all.(without any reply), 

I can understand how the situation could happen and I think sometimes a cancellation request can be quite reasonable.

But what has got me a bit suspicious on this one is that the seller could easily send you such a request via ebay. The fact they have tried to conduct it all off ebay makes me suspicious they are trying to dodge any ebay repurcussions on their account.

If you don't receive any response at all to your message through ebay (or indeed your email message) then the minute the item reaches the due delivery date, I'd open an item not received claim so you get your money back.

I think that would be fair. It would be giving them ample time to send a cancellation request.

[kopenhagen5]

A buyer cannot cancel a purchase only the seller can.

Send one final message instructing that all they need to do is to log into PayPal and select the refund button and that you would appreciate this be done within the next 24 hours as you have other items to pay for.

It takes 20 secs.

If they don't refund, open a case for item not received and the seller will be forced to refund.

[countessalmirena]

Is this a relatively inexperienced seller?

If so, I might feel sympathy for their situation. A seller who sells only a few items is going to be impacted more severely by the knuckle-rap given by eBay for a cancellation due to an item being out of stock.

However, the seller contacting you through your PayPal-linked address rather than through eBay messages causes me to think that this is not the seller's first rodeo... and is aware of the repercussions of having an out of stock item, and of contacting the buyer through eBay messages. That argues experience, which means that forgetting to take down the listing on eBay after the item sold elsewhere is less excusable.

It's up to you, rtwcollector, as to what your next course of action would be. The ball is really in the seller's court. The seller can go ahead with a cancellation (using the OOS reason) and suffer the consequences from eBay, or you can tell the seller you will do them a favour by sending a message requesting a cancellation so that they can avoid the defect.

If you were to contact eBay with the email that was sent to your PayPal-linked email address, I think your seller would be in worse trouble than ever.

For the seller, there are two options that would see them avoid being penalised. One is to cancel the order with the "buyer requested cancellation" reason, or with the "problem with the buyer's address" reason. The other is simply to wait it out until you open a "where is my item" case, at which point they would simply refund you promptly and voilà, no defect. From the seller's lack of communication since contacting you by email, I suspect that's the course decided upon by the seller.

If you want your money back quickly, I think you'll have to request a cancellation ... or take the hard line and contact eBay using the "Have us call you" option, and during the phone conversation offer to forward the email in question. I tend to err on the side of mercy, particularly since the consequences for sellers are very serious in this sort of case, but there's no denying that under eBay's rules the seller has got himself into a right royal stinking pile of ordure.

[rtwcollector]

I have emailed the seller this morning requesting that they cancel the order through ebay and refund the order using PayPal today, if it is their intention not to fulfill the order and as it has been numerous days without hearing from them.

I will open an eBay case after the arrival period has past. Or do you think I should act sooner?

Thanks again for the help!

[lyndal1838]

You cannot open an ebay case beffore the estimated delivery date has passed.

If you want to do it earlier you will have to open a case in paypal.

[rtwcollector]

I can wait to be refunded at a later date so I am in no rush there. I will not request the seller to cancel the order as my red flags are up due to receiving the message using my personal email and not over eBay messages. And If I did request to cancel the order, I would be put at a disadvantage.

If the seller continues not to act, I could report the issue to eBay earlier rather than later. I do want to try to avoid this but the seller should be communicating with me and they are not so courtasay might be out the door. I actually did not consider terms and conditions before so I might take a look at them.

I contacted the seller this morning and if they have not responded after 24 hours I am considering doing something about it rather than just waiting for the shipping date to pass.

[rtwcollector]

Thanks for the information. I’ll wait until I am able to open a case but I’m still not sure whether I should report this issue or not (contacting me outside of eBay).

[brerrabbit585]

The seller may have made a mistake ONCE before and been issued with a defect, which would explain why they're extremely wary this time and have contacted you privately. One more defect could mean the end to them being able to sell on ebay.

It doesn't sound to me like the seller is a repeat offender in this regard. If they were they'd know that a buyer can't 'officially' request a cancellation, only by asking in a message.

I know they probably haven't gone about it the right way but I can understand why they did it if they've had one defect before. A few people have said in the forums that last year there was a glitch where items they'd sold were relisted without them realising it, and without them doing it. That could have happened to this seller previously and they may not have realised it wasn't caused by them.

You have to ask yourself do you really want to be responsible for closing someone's selling account just because they contacted you privately. It doesn't sound to me like they're doing it for any sinister reason so I can't see any harm in replying to them privately and telling them that they can cancel the transaction as "the buyer requested it" without getting a defect.

It's easy enough to make a mistake and accidentally relist something, or to list it twice without realising it. I've had listings show up in unsold when they're also in my Active Selling list, and it would have been really easy for me to relist the unsold one and end up with two listings for the same item.  You're not going to get the item anyway because they obviously haven't got it, so why not just ask them to cancel it and move on?

I recently used Sell Similar instead of Relist on a few items and it was only a week or two afterwards I realised that the number of those items I'd sold got added back into the number available. By then I'd relisted 600 items and didn't know which listings were a problem and have an incorrect inventory, and the only way to find out would be to do a stocktake on 600 items. The time involved would be phenomenal and it's not worth it to find maybe two or three listings that are incorrect so I just have to hope I don't end up getting defects when those items sell.