Why would this happen?

[spammertime]

Have been looking for a new waterproof and saw a nice looking one on eBay, bid start £40 with BIN option of £80. Anyway I put in bid 3 days ago for £40. Couple of other bidders pushed price up to £45ish. Auction due to close on Sunday.

Today I get an email saying my bid has been cancelled as "item no longer available" and saying I should be cautious about being asked to buy the item now this has happened.

Can anyone shed some light as to what has probably actually happened here? Thanks!

someone bought it on buy it now...

But once bids have happened the buy it now option goes doesn't it?

I think the seller can still close an auction early if they choose to if there is more than 24 hours to go.

Maybe seller made a mistake and ended it early, or maybe worried it wouldn't reach £80 so chickened out now. Have they relisted it at £80?

My dh had his old car on Ebay and when he managed to sell it privately he cancelled the item and on the account it came up as 'item no longer available'.

He felt bad for those people who had placed bids but we really needed the money.

I don't think it disappears when there is bids

why would it?

For ordinary sellers the BIN option disappears once a bid is placed, But certain sellers/sales it doesn't - I'm blowed if I can remember the criteria though sorry.

Sellers are allowed to advertise elsewhere & end auction early, happens a lot, maybe not allowed to end in last 12 hours, but mostly done how seller likes.
It's possible someone who saw the ad on Ebay offered cash now, turned up to view, paid the cash & collected there and then, seller ends auction having avoided Final value fees. Sneaky, eh?

I think sometimes sellers end auction having been made an offer, but then the would-be buyer doesn't turn up. So seller goes back to bidders & makes offers about sale without actually relisting the item, to avoid FVFs again, because transaction would be outside of Ebay formal channels. Hence the warning.

A BIN won't disappear if there is a reserve on the item and the low bid hasn't met that reserve.

Thanks everyone. Makes sense. The BIN definitely went but I didn't realise auctions could be just cancelled once bids have taken place. Does that impact seller ratings at all? Seems a bit shitty if someone does it a lot!

I ended an auction once, but that was because we were selling our car and then it broke down which we couldnt afford to fix. So it wasn't being sold as advertised anymore.

Spammer, it could be innocent reasons, I had some baby uggs on ebay (they were a gift......) and I was getting them ready to go as they had a bid on so I knew they would sell. I came downstairs to find one chewed by the dog. hence ending listing early.

Ebay don't like you to buy something you have seen that has been listed with them when they get nothing from it so they would prefer the seller to relist.

I wouldn't ready anything too sinister into it. If this constantly happened ebay would cotton on to it pretty quickly.