"I recently had a auction I had won canceled by the seller 5 minutes after auction ended. I did not think a seller could do this, I thought you had to sell the item to the person who won the auction".
A seller should complete a transaction no matter how much they get for an auction. However, many new or inexperienced sellers don't know that, and they set the starting bid at a price well below what they are willing to accept for the item. eBay actually tells sellers to do that, but it often does not work out well for the seller.
" I won the auction for 91 dollars, he relisted it days later for 500 dollars. I think this is a real sleazy move!!"
eBay doesn't like that either, so the seller does not get off without consequences. They will get a defect on their account, and if you paid and were refunded they are still charged the transaction fees by eBay and PayPal. If you hadn't paid before they cancelled they still get a defect and if they do not sell very often, a few defects could get them banned from the site.
"A seller like this gives EBAY a bad reputation, I have seen some of his other items relisted, looks very SHADY, If anyone knows if this is legal?"
Did you look at their feedback profile before bidding? If they do not sell often that is always something to take into account when bidding. One cannot always tell from the sold or completed item history, if the seller's items being relisted was because they cancelled an auction, or their buyer(s) did not pay, that too happens.
A seller cancelling a won auction is not legal by ebay rules or by law. However, ebay has no way of forcing sellers to complete a transaction, just as they cannot force buyers to pay.
You could file a small claims case against the seller, but you would have to do that in the municipality where they live, and show up in court. That's probably not economically feasible in most cases, since expenses incurred in pursuing a case are not recoverable.
If you want to report the seller because they re-listed the item at a much higher price follow the steps below. Reporting them will not get you the item, but it may stop them from cancelling future auction sales again.
- Click on the Resolution Center button at the bottom of most ebay pages.
- Select Resolving issues with sellers in the Help box.
- On the page that opens select Reporting an item or issue with a seller.
- Down the page that opens is a list of possible policy violations #2 is "They do not intend to complete the sale". under that is a Report a Seller button. Click,
- Select; the seller violated an ebay policy.
- Fill in the seller's user ID without their feedback number, check Other, and in the text box say the seller gave an invalid cancellation reason. Then relisted the item for much more than the price auction ended with.
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FOOLPROOF, BECAUSE FOOLS ARE SO DARNED INGENIOUS!" (unknown)
