Seller cancelled my order claiming issue with my address
Summary: bigbars shared a lengthy post expressing frustration over a seller cancelling their order due to an alleged issue with the delivery address. bigbars suspects the seller used this reason to avoid a defect on their record after accepting an offer lower than the original price. Other participants, such as roger_roger_over_and_nowt and lucy_farmer, agree that claiming address issues can help sellers avoid sanctions on platforms like eBay. blofieldbooks suggests that the seller might be drop shipping, causing stock issues. There is advice given on whether or not to leave negative feedback, with zobth92 suggesting a simple negative response, but concerns are raised by *casey* about the feedback being removed if contested. bigbars is unsure if feedback is worthwhile if it's likely to be removed.
Hello everyone, or Good morning, depending when you read this, sorry for the extremely long post.
I sent an offer on an auction earlier last week for which the seller accepted. It was a few pounds less than the originally listed price, but seemed like a great deal, happy days I thought. Looked forward to receiving it. Sale completed. Paid immediately. After 3 days I woke up to see a notification that the seller at 5:17am had cancelled the sale with the category “problem with buyers address”.
Unfortunately, the seller had to cancel your order due to the following reason: Something was wrong with the buyer's delivery address.
Here's a summary of your refund. You should receive it in 3-5 working days.
With zero contact from the seller to query any issues, it did make me wonder, is this a sneaky means to back out of the sale without having problems with eBay? Does blaming the buyer for a problem with the issue allow the seller to circumvent an issue with sale?
On the help page it states, “Keep in mind that cancelling an order may result in a transaction defect and affect your seller performance level. You can cancel an order up to 30 days after the sale, even if the buyer has already paid. “
And “A seller can cancel an order if:
The buyer hasn't paid within the time allowed
The buyer used the wrong delivery address at checkout
The item is out of stock (this will result in a transaction defect)”
Surely you would engage with the buyer if there was any problem or concerns, which there shouldn’t be as I used it thousands of times. Doing this at 5:17am made me feel it’s dodgy, but why accept the offer if you didn’t feel like selling at the price? I messaged the seller almost immediately on noticing this, around 15 mins later, no immediate response from the seller.. also annoying is the fact you are forced to wait 3-5 days for the refund when the money is out your account pretty much straight away on purchase. I know this bit is a banking thing but still compounds things. I’ve always wondered if they (financial institutions) make interest on the days holding the money, sorry processing the refund.
8am I received this response from the seller, which looks like a standard waffle;
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but our dispatch team has informed us that the listed item is defective and not in proper working condition.
To avoid any disappointment, we have cancelled your order and issued a full refund. The amount should be credited back to your original payment method within 3–5 working days.
As a growing business, we are committed to learning, improving, and ensuring customer satisfaction at every step. Your understanding and patience truly mean a lot to us.
We kindly ask for your consideration regarding feedback, as we continuously work to improve our service and provide the best possible experience for our customers.
As a gesture of goodwill, we would be delighted to offer you a fair discount on your next purchase. Please feel free to browse our store and let us know if there’s anything you like.
Thank you again for your understanding and support. We genuinely value your custom and hope to serve you again in the future.
Warm regards,
Now, if that were true, why claim an issue with my address? Surely they should have selected the option to indicate an issue with the item. And seems to me they selected the address category to avoid a strike on their record. I was about to start a convo on here but saw the community was down for migration until today, so questioned the seller as to why they claimed there was an address issue, 6 days later... no response.
With nearly 4000 active items for sale, over 8000 sales made and feedback entries in the 5000s the growing business mentioned doesn’t seem genuine. I'd also be inclined to think the offer of a discount on a further purchase is just lip service to give the appearance of providing decent customer service.
Or am I just being overly cynical?
One reason that got my spidey sense tingling was that this has been multiple times sellers over the last two weeks undertaken what I see is underhand tactics to avoid completing a sale, had another one say "buyer requested cancellation" probably due to not wanting to sell at the extremely low price and promptly relisted it straight away.
Thank you for reading and sorry for the long post but wanted to cover everything.
bigbars
OP1 month agoThanks for the responses so far, thought as much. So the seller is clearly abusing the eBay sales policy for their own gain. Would you say this warrants a negative feedback for their performance ?
Wouldnt a polite person, contact the buyer prior to canceling. As it is an unfortunate coincidence that they claim it to be a problem with the address and a defective item.
zobth92
·1 month agoCertainly warrants a negative, but keep it simple: "Failed to complete transaction"
bigbars
OP1 month agoThanks, That is nice and simply worded.
Weirdly I've always been loathe to leave negative feedback in fear that they may do the same to me out of spite, especially as in this case, they claimed the issue was with my adress.
*casey*
·1 month ago · EditedAnd the shonky seller will be able to have your negative feedback removed
We remove neutral/negative feedback when we can see that:
The buyer asked to cancel after placing an order, winning an auction, or otherwise committing to buy
The order was cancelled due to an issue with the buyer’s address
The order was cancelled because the buyer didn’t pay
The buyer is raising an issue that was correctly disclosed in the listing
The buyer has been actioned under our Abusive buyer policy
The buyer requested a change to an order after they’d paid (and their feedback relates to this)
bigbars
OP1 month agoAhh, so pretty pointless to submit a neutral/negative feedback then in your opinion, as they would just request it to be removed?
lucy_farmer
·1 month agoYep, picking 'problem with sellers address' means the seller doesn't get a sanction from ebay for cancelling.
It may seem unfair to buyers who have absolutely nothing wrong with their address, but it really has to be this way.
Otherwise some sellers may get sanctioned for problems (like the buyer getting their address wrong- it can happen!) which they have no control over whatsoever....
blofieldbooks
·1 month agoIf an item is not sent owing to an issue with the buyer's address, then a defect is not logged. It also depends on the item purchased. It might well be that the seller is only drop shipping, and the manufacturer/original seller ran out of stock between the item being listed and your purchase. I have seen similar reasons sent by overseas based sellers (usually in China) when this has (most likely) happened.
roger_roger_over_and_nowt
·1 month agoClaiming problem with address means the seller avoids getting a defect.
If they had cancelled as out of stock/no longer available (for whatever reason) they would have been given a defect.