A little bit of ebay weirdness

[Scooter]

The other day I got an e-mail from ebay saying that an auction I had won had been deleted and that I shouldn't complete the transaction. Within 5 minutes I got a similar e-mail from Paypal saying the same thing and recommend I file a dispute to get my money back. I'm not really sure what good it does to delete/cancel an auction after it had closed almost two weeks prior and would have already been paid for, but it put me in a mild panic since I'd not yet received the item.

Thinking the e-mails were a hoax, I checked my ebay account and indeed the auction listing no longer existed AT ALL and the same note was found in my on-line account message box. I checked the Paypal record and found that the seller had shipped it through USPS with Paypal shipping notification and that the package was only about a day away.

I e-mailed the seller to see what the scoop was and was told it had been shipped and was almost to me already and referenced the same USPS info. Well, today the item arrived in fine shape and was everything the seller said it would be, new in the box. The seller's rating was, if I recall correctly, 99 or 100% at the time I won the auction. The only fault I could find with the seller was that they were a little slow on getting the item shipped. It took her about a week from the close of the auction to get it in the mail.

I'm not sure what could have pissed off ebay so bad and I appreciate their supposed warning of a potentially fraudulent seller but they seem to have been way off the mark on this one. It was only a $20 purchase so the risk was fairly low. Before I checked the shipping status and checked with the seller, I was about to file a dispute through Paypal so I'm glad I checked in on thing first. In the end I'm happy with my purchase but had I gone off in a panic I could have caused a lot of grief for a seller who had already held up their end of the bargain!

I wish ebay would have been this proactive and helpful when many years ago a seller tried to stiff me on a nearly $500 purchase. I finally got my merchandise on that one, it took nearly six weeks of harassment of the seller, after I sicced the Postal Inspector, local law enforcement and FBI on his ass for mail fraud but it was me doing all that work not ebay. Of course this was all before Paypal existed and I had paid via a cashier's check.

[Thierry Henry]

Could be that the sellers account was hijacked and so eBay was just taking some protective measures?

[MrPopo]

What did you purchase? If the item violated the terms of use then I can see eBay closing it. I remember when I purchased my DS Flash card I ended up having to go outside of eBay since they kept closing the one seller's auction. He had to put a notice in the description of "If you're interested then please email me at <blah> since eBay keeps deleting these auctions".

[Reverend]

What did you purchase? If the item violated the terms of use then I can see eBay closing it. I remember when I purchased my DS Flash card I ended up having to go outside of eBay since they kept closing the one seller's auction. He had to put a notice in the description of "If you're interested then please email me at <blah> since eBay keeps deleting these auctions".

same thing happened to me

[Scooter]

It was just a Genesis control pad.

[Jayson]

The seller must have had a problem with somebody gaining access to their account.

I had somebody gain access to mine during a period of time when I had not bought or sold anything for like 6 months. The crook put up like 150 auctions for what I think was the same thing (some camera gear, I only saw 2-3 as they were being closed). In the end, my account was frozen for a week while I proved who I was and eBay just shut it all down quickly even before I received the notification.

I imagine if I had some auctions up at the time, those would have been closed as well.

[lost_within]

good ol ebay....i guess this story is better than the other crap you hear atleast. Look on the bright side...someones got your back

[Niode]

I bought an SM57 microphone off ebay only to have them email me that the listing had been deleted a couple of days after I had already sent money. I contacted the seller and they said that he had shipped it and it should be there within a couple of days. I was thinking I had bought a counterfeit mic considering the price I paid (which was just over half of what I would pay if I went to a music store). It turned up a couple days later and it was a genuine microphone and the only problem was that the box was damaged slightly in transit.