Why do ebay auctions ended early

You should also keep an eye on the Messages section of your My eBay page Figure Any notes sent to you within the eBay system show up there. This works only for recent transactions in which you were either the buyer or seller of record. And finally, Federal Trade Commission law governing online sales allows a seller 30 days to ship an item after being paid unless the contract in our case, the auction page promises shipment sooner. Be patient, polite, and flexible when possible and most of your transactions will go very smoothly.

Unfortunately, feedback is largely permanent. At one point or another, nearly every eBay buyer has trouble with a seller. But unlike that situation, you do have a say in whether a lousy seller stays or goes.

Lance found a car he liked on eBay and placed a low bid. When the auction closed, he was delighted to find himself the winner.

He got an amazing deal. He left negative feedback a. She and Lance lived in different states…and how far could he get without a car? Having said that, newbies are especially protective of their feedback—and for good reason.

The risk may or may not be worth it to you. Just be sure your feedback is calm and factual so others trust your words. Name-calling in all caps with multiple exclamation points only makes you look like a hothead, as seen in Figure Remember that people tend to read the profiles of both people involved in a dispute, so retaliatory feedback is pretty easy to spot and disregard. After she won and the seller invoiced her, she noticed the cost for shipping had doubled. When Leslie questioned the seller about it, he told her he made a mistake in the listing and besides, she got such a great deal she had no room to complain.

A seller is never permitted to demand or even ask for additional fees. If you feel a mistake in a listing was an honest one, you may want to discuss some sort of compromise with the seller. Keep all emails from the seller, since eBay will want to see them as proof of your claim. If you can prove the seller refused to sell to you under the terms of the auction, eBay will remove the strike and reprimand the seller. And, of course, you can always leave appropriate feedback for him as well.

Shill bidding or shilling is the act of a seller or an accomplice using another ID to bid on her own item to drive up the price. As a buyer, the best way to avoid being shilled is to bid late in an auction. You should also generally try to avoid private auctions , which hide bidder identities and make shilling harder to spot see Figure As a rule, the only legitimate private auctions are those in the Mature Audiences category.

Some extremely exclusive, very expensive items also use the private auction format to protect the bidders from being spammed by other sellers and to prevent fraudulent Second Chance Offers.

See Chapter 6 for more on this. The only thing you can do as a buyer is to stall your payment for a few days while eBay investigates. Exclamation point. Read our article on canceling a transaction for sellers. Listing format Time left in listing Listing state Can the listing be ended early? You may be charged a final value fee based on the amount of the highest bid. Fewer than 12 hours No bids Yes 1 or more bids with reserve price not met Yes.

You may be charged a final value fee based on the amount of the highest bid 1 or more bids with reserve price met or no reserve price set No, you can only sell the item to the highest bidder.

Top Takeaway You can end a listing early in certain situations. Was this article helpful for you? That's really the only way to accept the buyer's offer without violating eBay policies. A: Probably not. In order to close the listing early, you have to cancel each bidder's bid, which means having to explain to them why you're doing that. As long as you don't make a regular practice of this, however, you shouldn't get into too much hot water on eBay.

As long as you are relisting the item on eBay as a Buy It Now! Q: "I canceled an auction that had twenty-two people watching it. Will they be notified or will they just be left hanging? The auction will still be in their watch list as ended. They can check the listing and see that you ended this listing early because of an error in the listing, and that it has been relisted.

Some sellers revise the description before ending the listing, to let people I listed them as auction listings with a Buy It Now! I'm afraid now that my items are going to sell at a huge loss. Can I cancel these listings even though there are bids on them? If not, I guess this is just a learning curve thing I'll have to eat.

Other legitimate reasons to cancel buyers' bids:. How to cancel a bid:. Canceling a sale is an eBay no-no unless a buyer requests it. Buyers may change their minds, and if that is the case, it is perfectly acceptable to cancel a sale.

But if an item is damaged or out of stock and a seller must cancel because he can't ship the item, the cancellation counts against the seller. To cancel an eBay sale :. Be cautious about using the "block buyer" feature as a seller. Sometimes buyers ask weird or unusual questions, but that isn't a good reason to block them. Once blocked, people can't buy anything from you ever, unless you remove the block. Legitimate reasons for blocking buyers include:.