Issue with address, agreed to cancel then re-list, sold to someone else...

[negan]

This is more to vent as I know there is nothing I can do.

So, 1 of a kind card for auction. There is no others like it, this is the only one.

I win the auction.

I pay for the item. I realise after paying that the estimated delivery time is after I move out of my then current address.

My fault.

I contact the seller about it. They say they don't know what to do. A week later after no correspondence the item is marked as posted. I contact the seller about it. They say they didn't post it they just marked it as posted so they wouldn't get a warning. They still say they don't know what to do. They then message me again a few days later saying that I had to submit a cancel request so they could re-list the item for me to buy again. As it was marked as posted I couldn't submit a cancel request.

I woke up this morning to a message from the seller saying they unmarked it as posted, cancelled the item and re-listed it and I just had to send in the offer.

I was asleep when these messages were sent at 4:30am due to timezones.

As I expected I went to go put an offer on the item and it has been sold to someone else.

The seller has not replied to my 5+ messages regarding this.

I put it so much effort and apologised so many times for my error to make sure I got this item to the right address and the exact thing I tried to prevent happened. Now some other buyer gets the card that I've been monitoring for weeks to resolve.

I know there is nothing I can do now but leave negative feedback, I just wanted to vent and see if anyone else has had similar situations.

Again, if I had changed my address to being with, I would have gotten the card, it is ultimately my fault, but I believe I remained very professional and did everything I could to resolve the issue and the seller decided to do the wrong thing.

[negan]

And I only hounded them as they had my money and it took them 9 days to reply to my first message

[davewil1964]

Save the paragraph

[negan]

What is that supposed to mean?

[padi*0409]

If you don't use paragraphs it's very hard to read a post.......................

[janeababe]

Negan, sorry this has happened to you, hindsight is it could easily have been avoided, and foresight is better than hindsight.

Is your seller in USA by any chance? Big time difference which might explain the big delays in between message replies and responses. 

I do do have to agree with the others though, eBay are fobbing you off. They say 'oh yes, right you are, we'll look into that for you'  then they do nothing at all!

i also agree that leaving neg feedback is a tad harsh, but I can see your POV too. 

Its ts just a load of unfortunate events. 

Uhhhhh .....  if you DO get some satisfaction from eBay after all this, let us know. 

Good luck 

😊

[negan]

Thank you for your support.

Yes they are based in the US which is why it was relisted so early AU time, it is not the seller’s fault for not knowing that.

I would usually agree with you and the others about eBay not helping. I can confidently say the last 10 chats i’ve had with eBay they stated they could not do nothing on their end and ended it there. This representative though was very relatable, told me about their experiences as a seller and looked into our messages and checked if the seller had shipped the item yet and when they offered to talk to the seller they made sure I was aware it didn’t guarantee anything. Another big surprise was their excellent English.

If the seller responds to my message explaining why they disregarded our agreement I will leave it at that, but I truly believe they took advantage of the situation to get a higher price for the item. After I initially won the auction the first message they sent me was saying that I got it for a steal and they expected it to sell for much more...it just connects to me...

Anyway thanks, I will update this thread with a result, if there is a change...

[springyzone]

My feeling is the seller found this whole sale a bit fraught with problems & delays, especially since he felt he was not getting a great price anyway. And once a sale is cancelled there is no guarantee a buyer will rebid. It was pretty likely you would, I know, but not an absolute certainty.

It sounds as if he must have received a higher offer almost immediately after he relisted, so maybe what he said was right, the original price was too low. So he gave in to temptation and figured to go with the certain sale. Or else the system was set to automatically accept offers over a certain amount.

Whatever happens from now on in, whether ebay rings the seller or not, I doubt you have any hope of seeing that card.

Have a look at this from the seller's point of view.

He now has 2 people who can give him feedback about this sale.He knows he has upset you.

If he sends the card to the other buyer who is paying the higher price, it will be a hassle free transaction & he is likely to get good feedback. Plus he gets more money. If he reverses that, he'll just have 2 upset buyers.

If you give him a neg, all he has to reply is he cancelled the sale & refunded you as you gave him an invalid address.

Given the situation he is in, it would be madness for the seller not to send to buyer #2.

PS It's not that i don't have sympathy for you. I was once in a similar situation where a seller said she would list an item for me 'tomorrow'. By the time I saw the listing, the item had sold to someone else.

[negan]

I think you are right, the seller took advantage of the situation and went for the higher price rather than honouring our agreement.

And you know, that would have been understandable. 

If they said from the start it was too much of a hassle (what I probably would have done in their situation) and they would refund me and relist it, I would not have blamed them.

It was the fact they made the agreement to resell it to me and that it took weeks of prompting on my part for them to start the process.

It was such a slow progression and when it was almost resolved, it all went to hell.

It was like watching someone help you along and when you almost get it all sorted they reveal their masterplan to deceive you and use the situation ONLY to benefit themselves.

As stated, I said I would cooperate in anyway I could, after 2 weeks of no response I even asked them just to post to the original address anyway to stop with the hassling.

I can imagine how annoying I must have been but what else was I supposed to do when I had no response for 2 weeks and they had my money sitting there.

[brerrabbit585]

If the seller told you to offer the same price as you originally paid then there's a 99.9999% likelihood that they had it set to auto accept offers from that price upwards.  That means when someone else made a higher offer the system automatically accepted it and the seller was obliged to sell to them.  They would have had the BIN price set high to discourage other buyers so you wouldn't miss out, but someone else was prepared to offer more.  So no, the seller DID NOT deliberately take advantage of the situation and sell for a higher price.  The price paid was the second buyer's decision and completely out of the hands of the seller, so please stop accusing the seller of planning it.

If you bombarded them with messages but never offered any solution then you can't blame the seller for anything.  Even long term sellers don't know the solution for this type of situation and they may have not have answered if they thought it was a possible scam (quite likely, as digitalghost pointed out).  They may have been sick with worry at the thought of losing their item and their money so they took their time thinking about it.  I've been in the same situation and I know exactly how that feels!  If they thought there was a possibility of a scam it's no surprise they took over a week to answer you and I think you should be grateful that they even considered risking selling to you.

The second buyer may back out yet so don't burn your bridges, especially by leaving a negative which the seller doesn't deserve.  You put them into a very stressful situation by your actions but you want to ultimately blame them for the outcome.  You made the mistake so you should be prepared to accept responsibility for it and be adult enough to accept that you missed out on the item ONLY because of YOUR actions.  I think you should give them credit for going ahead and giving you the chance to buy it, despite the fact that a different address meant there was a high likelihood of you being a scammer.

I've done special listings for a lot of buyers and at least 30% never go ahead and buy so my work has been for nothing.  Many take at least a day to buy, sometimes two days, so these days I tell people I can't stop anyone else buying the item so they need to buy it as soon as they can before anyone else gets a chance.  It's unlikely to happen with most of my items but I have no way of knowing.  I'm not going to mess around putting higher prices on things to discourage others and then telling them to make an offer - if they really want it they'll make sure they buy it as soon as I've listed it.  I usually ask them what the best time to list is and if they can't be bothered to be around then and they miss out, that's their problem and I'll sell to the first person to buy.  If they haven't been very good with their communication I'll just list it when it suits me and then send them the item number.  Some buyers are sheer hard work and I've learnt not to make extra work for myself, which often turns out to be just a waste of time.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:

The second buyer may back out yet so don't burn your bridges, especially by leaving a negative which the seller doesn't deserve.  You put them into a very stressful situation by your actions but you want to ultimately blame them for the outcome.  You made the mistake so you should be prepared to accept responsibility for it and be adult enough to accept that you missed out on the item ONLY because of YOUR actions.  I think you should give them credit for going ahead and giving you the chance to buy it, despite the fact that a different address meant there was a high likelihood of you being a scammer.

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the feedback ship has sailed