Seller cancelled my order claiming issue with my address | Buying

bigbars · 2026-06-16T22:35:22.487637Z

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 allowedThe buyer used the wrong delivery address at checkoutThe 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.

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Seller cancelled my order claiming issue with my address | Buying | eBay UK