Your feedback says "great price!" and your post here says "very good price". You also say that the seller would have perceived this as getting a "dud price".
It was not just a great price/very good price. It was an unrealistically and unbelievably low price, considering the usual price of these cameras. Even just buying the body costs about $100 more than your winning bid.
There are multiple fakes of this camera listed for sale by Chinese sellers on eBay, with prices about 3 times your winning bid.
No wonder you were male-chicken-a-hoop. (Oh, for goodness' sake! I had to edit an innocent little hyphenated term.)
I'm not surprised that the seller was so unhappy with this price that he/she would rather not sell at that price.
The seller didn't even realise that by selecting "out of stock or damaged", his/her account would receive a seller defect. Or perhaps they did realise, but would rather wear that defect than give away an expensive camera for less than a quarter of its selling price.
I can understand that you're upset, but unless you want to take the seller to court to enforce the contract, there is nothing you can do. Even if you did take the seller to court, the seller could say that upon inspecting the camera after the bidding ended, they noticed a defect in the camera (even perhaps just a small scratch) which they hadn't noted when listing, and upon that basis they cancelled the sale.
Giving negatives and reporting sellers for non-performance is your prerogative; eBay allows you to do these things. However, what did you think would eventuate as a result?
- You couldn't have thought that the seller would have a change of mind and contact you to say "You can have the camera at that price."
- You couldn't have thought that this was worth the thousands of dollars it would take to bring the case to court.
- You could have thought that the seller hadn't suffered enough by getting a defect.
- You could have thought that it wasn't enough to simply give the seller a negative on what very clearly (as you even acknowledge) an account mostly used for buying but as a seller was just a casual eBay seller. (Your negative feedback is, however, fair, and accurately worded.)
- You could have thought that it wasn't enough that your feedback brought down the seller's percentage to 83.3%.
- You could have thought that relating the failed purchase on the eBay community forum would see the seller pilloried - but I truly hope that is not the case, as you may simply have been venting on missing out on a bargain saving you hundreds of dollars.
, I think you have allowed your disappointment at not getting an absolute steal to assume too great an importance. I perfectly understand that you must have been over the moon at getting such an incredible bargain... but at some point surely one would realise that the only thing jumping over the moon is a children's nursery rhyme cow. Perhaps the most important thing I learned in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution was that in a fair price neither the buyer nor the seller feel taken advantage of. The final price might be a little more than the buyer wanted to pay, and a little less than the seller wanted to receive, but if the scales are too heavily weighed one way, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
By the way, you do point out one consequence of a withdrawn sale that is definitely more than just annoying - in that the buyer might make plans or perform actions on the basis of that winning bid which put him/her out, cost him/her money, etc. Of course the charger that you bought is a low-cost item; thankfully you haven't suffered a major consequence (which could have happened).
A quick google returns a result for that camera model - good condition, reasonable price, US seller.
