Don't you love Ebay sellers who pull auctions early

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Posted By: Jeff O

I promise this will be my last post on this (unless someone asks a specific question of me).

"- eBay receives listing fees when an auction is ended early."

Great. But they don't get their final value fee, so they got their $0.20 listing fee. Of course, if you'd sold it via auction for the amount you received for the item, they would have received a lot more, right?

"- I completed the transaction via paypal which is another 3% for ebay."

You chose to accept PayPal, another contract you voluntarily entrered. You don't have to use it, and if you don't you do not have to pay this expense.

"- I pay ebay various montly fees for the right to advertise and maintain our ebay store."

This item does not appear to have been sold as part of your store, but as part of an auction. Separate fee structures apply to each, which you agree to by participating.

"- eBay could choose to have a standing "buy it now" but as it stands after the first bid is received the "buy it now" disappears (unless you have a reserve)."

You knew the rules going in. Since this is so inconvenient, you could always cancel all the bids and close out your auction, then relist with a BIN that was the price you and the buyer agreed to. Then eBay gets their fees (of course, they probably get that extra $0.20 listing fee from the first auction too... I'm sure you could pass that along to the buyer if it's a big deal).

" eBay is a community, they bring me many customers and I bring them customers as well. I have sold many cards over ebay to first time ebayers that received my card at a show and then immediately went to register on ebay to buy from my ebay store."

eBay brought many more potential customers to you than you ever brought to it, and you are under no contractual obligation to bring them customers. Are there really a lot of people around today who don't know about eBay? Besides which, by listing an item for sale, you entered into a contract, which you then chose to ignore.

Here's a list of the rules:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html

Here's a quote from one of the things that's prohibited:

Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who became aware of the item through eBay

Seems pretty clear to me.

Look, I'm not trying to single out this seller. I don't know Charlie, and I don't believe I've ever bought anything from him, and this certainly wouldn't stop me from buying something from him via eBay in the future. Believe me, I've had some problems of my own with the folks at eBay. But the rules are clear. Everyone loves to complain about all the things that suck about eBay, but nobody complains when they don't get what's coming to them.

And Frank, I don't own any eBay stock... at least not that I know of!

Jeff