I was looking for an item on ebay and found it with a Tasmanian seller for a good price but their postage was advertised at $115.
The listing said they had 9 in stock but I only needed one.
So I contacted the seller asking them to revise their listing to a more reasonable postage cost so I could buy one. I even suggseted I could commit to buy and wait for an amended invoice to reduce the postage to a reasonable level.
They responded that they were unable to sell me one as there was an ebay system problem with the particular listing and that ebay CSR had advised them not to sell any at this time. And that ebay were currently investigating the problem with no time estimation for a fix.
So I thought I would help the seller and report the problem as a buyer so that it might expedite the fix for them. I related the story I had been given by the seller.
Ebay responded to me that they had looked at the listing and could see no problem with it and that there had been no problem reported by the seller. They suggested I contact the seller again. They also said they would pass this info on to their listings team.
So I made contact with the seller again and this time got a rather terse message back saying they did not wish to correspond any further with me and that I should buy it elsewhere.
So I went back to ebay again with that and it now looks like the listing has been removed. Not sure who by.
So it would appear that this is some kind of trick to deter buyers when they have really run out of stock. Not too sure why they wouldn't activate the out of stock option and set the listing qty = 0.
