Abusive buying practices

[robinsonpeterg]

Why are winning bidders allowed to cancel the purchase, clearly lying through their teeth regarding a reason with no recourse to punitive consequences or even negative feedback.

[plpmr]

buyers cannot cancel, only sellers can.

[eastern-lights]

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@plpmr wrote:

buyers cannot cancel, only sellers can.

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Technically correct but unhelpful.

Buyers can request to cancel, and sometimes do within minutes of winning an auction. Seller can decline, in which case the risk is the buyer will pay, receive the item and then open a fake INAD case. Or seller can ignore the cancellation request, in which case I believe, open to correction, Ebay will automatically cancel the transaction. Or the seller can accept the cancellation and move on.

What grates is that there are no consequences for the serial canceller, they could do it daily for a year or for ever, wrecking auctions each time. It would be nice if it worked like non-payment strikes and sellers could block serial cancellers. It's the same thing as non payment really. As it is, all the seller can do is block individuals after they have cancelled.

So OP I sympathise, but all you can do is block them and move on.

[vinylscot]

In a worst case scenario, if you refuse a cancellation request, the buyer could deliberately damage the item when he receives it, and raise a return request, which would be automatically accepted. You would then need to refund everything the buyer paid, plus his postage to return the item, and then you find you have a broken item which you can not re-sell. So it's much better to just accept it. Add the buyer to your blocked bidder list, and move on.

I do agree there should be consequences for serial cancellers, as there are for serial non-payers. Perhaps there could be a limit of five cancellations in a year.

One of the causes of the problem, of course, is eBay continuing to display competing sellers' items (which may be cheaper or better) right up to, and even after the point of sale.