Type 1A # 500

It is against ebay rules for someone to interfere with an auction, you can cancel and refuse to sell, you cant make anyone sell any item but it was wrong and you deserve the negative you got.

I've always felt that we should begin by assuming each party to an agreement is honorable and acting in good faith. If Bob were to find a similar block of four 499 and offer it to the buyer, then the buyer could decide whether or not he wanted the 499. If the buyer insists on having a block of four 500, then he can't be said to be acting in good faith as, I'm assuming, the auction was listed as 499.

And I still feel that ebay should insist on earnest money for this sort of situation. A penalty of 15% of the winning bid would not be unfair and would bring more caution to those who sell items while helping prevent those who might prey on the inexperienced.

Both Buyer remorse and seller remorse can be problematic but both are certainly permitted by ebay. But the tricky question is not about ebay policy, it is about doing business. As is obvious by this thread (and others before it) there are many folks who are not happy campers when either a buyer or a seller backs out of a transaction. In this case the seller has the ebay 'right' to not honor the transaction; but whether or not this is a good business decision is another question. Some sellers might figure the few hundred dollars lost was not worth potentially angering other customers. Other sellers may not see it this way and be willing to take that chance.
Don

There is an old saw that says "ignorance of the law is not an excuse." By the same token, ignorance should not be a reason to back out of a completed business transaction. The only way to be a baby from which candy can be taken is through conscious choice.

Mike - you've summed it up perfectly

Hi Jenny2U,
This topic has been covered before and the players all sided the same way. I do not recall any posts which argue that it is against ebay policy; both buyers and sellers can back out of a transaction. (There are certainly as many threads in which sellers complain about buyers who have backed out of transactions as there are threads which complain about sellers who back out.) I also do not recall anyone arguing that an incorrect listing (in either direction) is a 'good' thing or is beneficial to anyone.

We can all agree that this issue is very polarizing and this puts this decision squarely in the business realm. Given the substantial number of folks who get angry at a cancelled transaction (rightly or wrongly) how do you justify this decision? Is being 'right' more important than getting many other potential buyers upset? Owning a retail shop for 20 years my wife and I always struggled with these kinds of decisions but often ended up following the adage 'the customer is always right'. (Frankly after a customer assaulted my wife one day we closed the shop after testifying and the conviction of the guy; so I obviously cannot say following this adage always worked out for us.) But I can't think of a time where we refused to sell an item or cancelled a sale when we had made a mistake; we believed that everyone should be responsible their own mistakes. We have all seen promotional flyers which state that a retailer is not responsible for any pricing mistakes which the flyer may contain. But we also have seen many times in which a retailer will honor a mistaken price.

I feel this issue is more complex than just the ebay policy. And since I value your opinion I would like to know how you justify your position in this emotionally charged, and potentially expensive, issue. Is it 'dollar-based'? Would you overlook losing a few dollars but draw a line at losing more? Or is it always ok for a buyer/seller to cancel a transaction for any reason at anytime? If a buyer cancels a transaction, a seller can make the case that the it consumed time and might have caused missing the sale to another customer. But it seems to me that a buyer can make a similar case, they lost time and might have missed bidding on another item because they were attending to the cancelled sale.
Don

Don, you are a professional and should know your product. If you make an error, it's a legitimate error and you are in a good position to decide whether to absorb the loss or not.

In this case, if the seller was nystamps, I'd be cheering the buyer because he got a good deal from a professional stamp dealer. But this seller is not an expert and listed the stamp based on incorrect info. A good Samaritan (possibly from this forum?) advised him of the error, thus also leaving it up to the seller to decide how to proceed. Under ebay's guidance, the seller decided to cancel the sale (and he probably will earn close to $800-$1,000 in exchange for the negative). I absolutely agree with Mike that all misidentified items should be treated equally.

Hopefully the seller will relist the block so all those wanting to bid much higher than the closing price will now be able to do so.

(And how are you feeling?)

Jenny2U,
So far, so good, thank you for asking. I also concur with Mike but did not fully understand his post; I did not see anyone arguing that misidentified items should be treated differently.

I am a firm believer that everyone should be responsible for their actions. In other words if I were teaching my son or daughter how to buy or sell and they made a mistake, I feel it would be a good opportunity for them to learn a lesson. There is no 'the dog ate my homework' at my house. I do agree that there can be certain circumstances that can explain why some mistakes can happen; but as another poster pointed out no one can really determine the actual intentions of a buyer or seller.

My concern is what will happen to the marketplace if cancelling a transaction becomes more common. If there is little significant impact for a buyer or seller in cancelling a transaction it can become more likely to happen. Of course there are currently a few negative things that can happen if a buyer or seller cancels transaction now like impact to their ratings. But is this enough? I am not sure it is, plenty of folks appear to still get upset over this issue. (I am assuming that if they felt ok with the current recourse, they would not be so upset.)

I think I side with KGB; a bit more persuasion should be in place to keep canceling a transaction less likely. Perhaps both buyers and sellers should be charged a small fee (10%?) for cancelling a transaction. The fee should go to the other party, not ebay, to cover the time and headaches they have invested. ebay should only be allowed to collect their normal fees, not the entire percentage. A nominal charge seems like a small price to pay for a mistake that a person has made, life isn't often that forgiving.
Don

And how many countless examples are shared in this Community of the successful bargain purchase of a poorly identified item from a dealer, antique shop, flea market, ebay, etc?

Fron Don: Both Buyer remorse and seller remorse can be problematic but both are certainly permitted by ebay.... this means what the seller did was not un-ethical or illegal. It just comes with the territory when operating at the ebay flea market. Just another reason why the clueless seller was lucky to be using ebay. As an ebay buyer you have to be aware that sometimes great deals can fall through. I can say with certainty however, if I were the BUYER and not the UNDERBIDDER I would wait for the stamp to be delivered before posting anything on SCF. Stamp collecting is fun, I don't think we should get too riled up about one crazy incident.

It was mentioned a few times that the seller should just suck it up and honor it anyway and that it was cancelled because he didn't get enough for it. That would be similar to expecting a buyer to refuse a great deal because the price was too low.

as I stated in a previous thread....

rlmstamps2012.....Regardless of the misidentify, you made a deal with the
high bidder....You want a good reputation???
LIVE UP TO THE DEAL. PERIOD.

The seller got way more than he expected to get for the block. He should have been ecstatic !

It wasn't until the sale was concluded and someone intervened that he felt cheated. That person should have pointed it out to the seller, while the auction was in progress. Then if he decided to cancel the auction, FINE, no problem !

My guess is that person that contacted the seller had no knowledge of that listing until after it was pointed out on SCF. Then they butted in where they had no place to be. Probably just sitting back laughing at all of the comments on the post.

ebay has many mis-identified stamp lots. I'd hate to even guess a percentage. Very few of us are experts. ebay bends over backwards to protect buyers but the buyer got screwed in this one! And no one seems very happy about it.

So are we saying it's "ethical" to represent stamps on ebay as Scott ### when we have no idea what they really are? To me, not doing a stitch of research before representing the catalog number is just as unethical as deliberately representing a stamp as a more expensive variety when you have actually done the research.

An error can only occur when an attempt to mitigate any potential errors is made PRIOR to the conclusion of a transaction.

He made an honest mistake, wrong Scott # - which would be an "Error in the Listing"...get over it!!