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Annoying eBay experience

12 replies

CorrodedCoffin · 22/06/2023 15:24

I bid on a chair on eBay a couple of months back, and I won! Only £35 - it was a bargain. I paid the following day and was making plans to drive to pick up the chair when the seller cancelled my order and refunded me. They messaged me and said that they were sorry but they were going through a divorce and their (soon to be ex) husband wanted the chair back. I was miffed but I accepted this - I messaged them back saying how sorry I was to hear about their troubles and asked, on the off chance that her husband changed his mind on the chair, if she would consider reselling it to me. She said yes and that was that.

Fast forward a couple of months and I’m on eBay again, and the chair pops up! Same seller. Only this time they set a reserve on the item. I chance my luck placing a bid but I don’t hit the reserve. I then message the seller, explaining the situation and they tell me their ex husband no longer wanted the chair but made a point of reminding her it originally cost over £100, and so that is what the reserve was now set at, and that she simply didn’t have the time to message me.

Basically, I want to know if anything can be done here? I know eBay can’t exactly force her to sell it to me at the original price, it’s all just very annoying and I don’t feel sellers should be allowed to just cancel orders and re-list if the price they get isn’t to their liking. At the very least I know I can leave negative feedback on the cancelled sale, but is that just being petty?

Have any of you experienced something like this? What did you do/what would you do?

OP posts:
Motnight · 22/06/2023 15:48

I would say just leave the woman be. Sounds like she's not having a great time at the moment.

lostparcel · 22/06/2023 15:53

Some people cancel the sale when they realise the final price is too low.

I'd watch and see if she lowers it as I doubt she will get what she paid for it.

FriedEggChocolate · 22/06/2023 16:02

Bet there's no husband. She just didn't get what she wanted for it first time round. If it wasn't for that pesky @CorrodedCoffin she'd have got away with it!

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KnitMePurlMe · 22/06/2023 16:05

@Motnight dont you think she made the ex husband up? 😄

gau · 22/06/2023 16:06

Yeah she's probably a liar.

EllaRaines · 22/06/2023 16:12

Regardless of there being an ex husband or not, the first time round she thought she would get a higher price and didn't.

Maybe she is new to eBay or just didn't realise she could or should have set a reserve.

She waited a bit and probably hopes you would have found another chair and relisted her chair this time with a reserve.

The reserve was not met and she is not bound to sell to you.

Yes it's annoying when it happens and personally I would honour my sale even if I had made a mistake or the item sold for a much lower price than I anticipated.

I fortunately you just have to suck it up.

BeverleyMacker · 22/06/2023 16:14

Happened to us recently. The seller has a history of saying and item was stolen from their garage so had to refund. We won another item,lo and behold their dog chewed it so it was destroyed. Set a reserve if you want more FFS 😡

gau · 22/06/2023 16:15

Honestly, I would just bid off a fake account and then not pay
Silly buggers gets silly buggers

MonumentalLentil · 22/06/2023 16:15

lostparcel · 22/06/2023 15:53

Some people cancel the sale when they realise the final price is too low.

I'd watch and see if she lowers it as I doubt she will get what she paid for it.

Happens a lot.
All you can do is report but it won't amek much difference unless other people do the same, there was a time it was taken into account but Ebay has changed a lot.

MonumentalLentil · 22/06/2023 16:15

make obviously, not amek.

CorrodedCoffin · 22/06/2023 16:35

FriedEggChocolate · 22/06/2023 16:02

Bet there's no husband. She just didn't get what she wanted for it first time round. If it wasn't for that pesky @CorrodedCoffin she'd have got away with it!

Haha, yes. This was exactly my thinking. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in the first place and didn’t kick up a fuss, but it’s looking to me like the husband/divorce thing might actually be a fabrication. 😅

OP posts:
CorrodedCoffin · 22/06/2023 16:41

Thanks for the input guys. I guess there’s not a great deal I can do about it (other than have my cathartic little moan on here lol). I’ll keep an eye on things and see if she ends up lowering the price again, and have a little think about reporting her in the meantime. If the divorce story is true then of course I don’t want to cause her any additional problems, but I do think other eBayers should be made aware if there’s a risk of her doing this kind of thing again. (To the above person who speculated that she was a new seller, she has sold about 200 items according to her profile, so definitely not new at this, but she does have good feedback so.. 🤷‍♀️)

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