Seller Cancels Auction Sale After Item is Paid for. / Bargains Depend entirely on Goodwill

[ra157]

Last Friday I had the interesting experience of winning a Nikon 1 J3 mirrorless camera with two lenses at a very good price. I immediately paid for it with Paypal. 19 minutes after the end of the auction, the seller then cancelled the sale, citing the reason as,
" I'm out of stock or the item is damaged".

Plainly she wasn't out of stock, and it strains credulity that she suddenly discovered the camera was found to be damaged within 19 minutes of my winning it. I reported the seller to Ebay.

Ebay's response included,

"I assure you that I have warned the seller and we will monitor their account to make sure that if they continue to cause bad-buyer experiences, we will take further actions which could lead to restrictions or even indefinite suspension."

As best I can see it – sellers can break their Ebay conditions and their contract with me with impunity.

Plainly, if this pattern is repeated by a frequent seller, Ebay will do something. But it appears that casual sellers never have to worry about getting what they perceive to be a dud price for their item. If they do, they can just cancel the sale and claim the item was damaged.

To make matters worse, the camera was listed as not having a charger, which I bought from another seller after winning the camera. Despite my requesting that he cancel the order, it is on its way to me, and I have paid $10.98 for a useless charger.

Anybody else had this type of  frustrating auction experience?
Regards,
Renato

[countessalmirena]

k1ooo-slr-sales, I know that the first part of your username is k1000, not klooo, but your investigative ability to follow the kl000s is admirable.

The OP may now feel less damaged and upset by losing out on this camera, by virtue of being made aware that the auction had in fact not run its full course, and that the seller, in good faith, ended the auction early in the evident belief that this was the same as cancelling the auction.

At that stage, perhaps realising that the camera was damaged, perhaps realising that they might not realise (in the of achieve a certain amount from a transaction) the amount which the camera was worth, the seller did everything within his/her power to put the situation right. At the time when the "hammer" fell, so to speak, the seller was not agreeing to the sale, so there is very little merit to an argument that the seller should have handed over an expensive camera to the highest bidder at the time.

Perhaps there are 9 other bidders/potential bidders out there, gnashing their teeth with disappointment that the listing for the camera for which they were bidding manually (or on which they'd placed a maximum bid with Gixen or similar to bid in the last few seconds of the auction) suddenly ended early, and they - with what they must surely feel is legitimate reason - missed out in spite of actually/potentially being the highest REAL bidders... If eBayers with this experience come to the boards to post about why they missed out and why the seller ended early at such a low price, at least the back story will put their posts in context!

[countessalmirena]

CORRECTION TO THE ABOVE: (in the sense of achieving a certain amount from a transaction).

Sorry. Without the word "sense", my post didn't make any. (Sense, that is.)

[lyndal1838]

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@4channel wrote:

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

You are the OP's sidekick and I would suggest that at least half of the posts on the thread belong to the OP with a goodly number of the rest being from you.

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200 posts and me  doing the rest. Incorrect! Do a count!

"Sidekick?" Don't think so! I just support the OP's right to express their displeasure of a bum deal and disuss the aspects of it. You as well I know very well Lyndal, that there are some cyber bullies here as well as some people who aren't that straight up!

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Obviously Comprehension was not your strongest subject at school.

If you don't understand what I have said there is little point in me explaining.

[negron18]

It's an auction. Why do we place items for sale at auction?. To get the best possible price. If the item sells at auction for twice more than what the seller thought it would, would everyone assume the seller would give half back to the buyer and say hang on, its hit my reserve so the rest i shall return?

It's a contract in the end of the day, it's a risk taken to try to get a better price than a buy it now price. Professional seller cops it on the chin and takes it as a loss.

I've had this happen in my store in the past auctions ending at much lower than i assumed. I coped it on the chin and sent it out. The question is we will never know if the item was damaged after the auction ended or not, but i would assume the seller in this scenario wasn't happy with the price it went for.

Could of easily started auction at a higher price or put a reserve on it.

Auctions are purely to either get rid of stock or to feed our greed of gettin as much bidders as possible to get the best price. Doesn't always work out that way sometimes!

Isn't that as sellers what we do ourselves? Buy low and sell high. Hunt around for wholesale bargains and auctions/sales to get at the cheapest possible price and then reseller to make a profit?

Buyer is upset, has posted up their experience, but hasn't done anything wrong. Just won an auction and expected to receive their goods as any of us would being ut through the same situation.

Time to move on buddy, contracts aren' t worth their worth on ebay anymore, both buyers and sellers can easily opt out without to much consequences, although for sellers the damage is much more higher than for buyers who get a "get out of free jail card".

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

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@ra157 wrote:

1.          Where do I have 924 feedbacks precisely?

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in my previous post I mentioned your total feedback of 924 without showing what I meant.  This screengrab will help you:

Spoiler

what padi failed to follow up with was an explanation of how he got the 924 figure when you questioned it . . . . . . and offering an apology for claiming you had sold 41 items when he should have said 14 . . . . . . . and that even a 12 year old knows how to find out how many total feedbacks a member has.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

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@negron18 wrote:

It's an auction. Why do we place items for sale at auction?. To get the best possible price. If the item sells at auction for twice more than what the seller thought it would, would everyone assume the seller would give half back to the buyer and say hang on, its hit my reserve so the rest i shall return?

It's a contract in the end of the day, it's a risk taken to try to get a better price than a buy it now price. Professional seller cops it on the chin and takes it as a loss.

I've had this happen in my store in the past auctions ending at much lower than i assumed. I coped it on the chin and sent it out. The question is we will never know if the item was damaged after the auction ended or not, but i would assume the seller in this scenario wasn't happy with the price it went for.

Could of easily started auction at a higher price or put a reserve on it.

Auctions are purely to either get rid of stock or to feed our greed of gettin as much bidders as possible to get the best price. Doesn't always work out that way sometimes!

Isn't that as sellers what we do ourselves? Buy low and sell high. Hunt around for wholesale bargains and auctions/sales to get at the cheapest possible price and then reseller to make a profit?

Buyer is upset, has posted up their experience, but hasn't done anything wrong. Just won an auction and expected to receive their goods as any of us would being ut through the same situation.

Time to move on buddy, contracts aren' t worth their worth on ebay anymore, both buyers and sellers can easily opt out without to much consequences, although for sellers the damage is much more higher than for buyers who get a "get out of free jail card".

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Professional seller cops it on the chin and takes it as a loss.

I agree, that is what a professional seller would do . . . . . . but the seller of the camera is far from being a professional seller . . . . . . inexperienced is a more apt term.

Could of easily started auction at a higher price or put a reserve on it

Can’t have a reserve price on a camera on eBay.au

Time to move on buddy

This advice has been offered to the OP by many members.

[padi*0409]

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@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:

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@ra157

Spoiler

what padi failed to follow up with was an explanation of how he got the 924 figure when you questioned it . . . . . . and offering an apology for claiming you had sold 41 items when he should have said 14 . . . . . . . and that even a 12 year old knows how to find out how many total feedbacks a member has.

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Not quite k1ooo, I said the seller's total feedback was 41.

In the inerests of clarity ra157's total feedback is 924 and selling feedback is 14.

The seller's feedback is 41 in total with 13 for selling.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

my apologies padi.

Looks like I made a mistake that even a 12 year old wouldn’t make.  My bad.

[padi*0409]

No worries k1ooo, I do however feel that with the OP having sold camera gear in the past and saying here he's won auctions for cameras at a good price, he's on-selling for a profit either here or on another platform.

Nothing wrong with that, but to carry on like a teenager with a tantrum over missing out on one bargain from an inexperienced seller says it all really.

And nobody except the seller knows if the camera was damaged or not - everything else is pure speculation.

[ra157]

Hi Springzone,
            Thanks for your detailed response.

You state,
"I think the seller is probably lying. But I don't know that for sure & actually, neither do you. Neither does ebay.

And that's the real bottom line."

First point -  I appreciate your candour.

Second point - I don't see any pile-on on you for saying what I have been saying from the start of this thread. 

Third point - where you state, 
"There is a cancellation procedure already in place to cover damage after a sale,why on earth would a seller not follow it?"
shows you bending over backwards on the premise that totally contradicts your first statement I quoted above.

Fourth point, you state,
"You would be asking the seller to send not because you actually want to buy a broken camera but because you wanted to check out if the seller was telling the truth or not. Ebay does not require the seller to provide you with that level of proof."

No, Ebay doesn't require the seller to do that. But it does require the seller to "While using the eBay services, you will not:
........fail to deliver items purchased from you.".

Fifth point,
          You state,
"'I typed in the wrong amount'. I'd be sure it's a lie 90% of the time."

I have retracted bids half a dozen times when I accidentally left out the decimal point. Ebay can see that my retraction is genuine as no one is going to bid $2012 on an item that may go for $60 to $100. I wonder why you are so suspicious of Buyers?
Regards,
Renato