Selling item which you have advertised elsewhere

Fuzzy_2

Hi

Hope someone can help here. I'm planning to place an item to sell on Ebay later this week, but am also planning to advertise it locally first, and possibly run along side the Ebay auction. I have seen other items for sale on Ebay with a statement along the lines of "Item is advertised elsewhere, therefore have the right to withdraw item from Ebay before auction end time".

Is this OK to do this, if you have stated this in the item description? Can you pull the auction early even if you have bidders? If so do you have to contact each bidder to inform them you are doing this? Naturally I would contact the bidders if I was doing this, as I feel it's only polite to do so.

Your help would be gratefully appreciated

sp41700

As long as you state that you may withdraw it then you are being reasonable. To canc el an auction with bids you would have to cancel the bids first otherwise you will be liable to sell to the highest bidder and pay ebay Final VAlue Fees.

G.

soolin

Strictly speaking it is against ebay terms and conditions to auction something that is being advertised elsewhere. Other peoples terms and conditions do not supercede that fact.

You can cancel an auction with bids as long as there is more than 12 hours to run. If there is less than 12 hours to run and a bid in place then ebay have the following to say

'' Timing Matters When there are 12 hours or fewer remaining and the item has a winning bid, including a reserve met bid, sellers may not make any changes to the listing, including:
ending the item early. Sellers may cancel bids, but not end the item
adding to or changing the item description
converting the item to pre-approved bidder
Canceling bids or making changes to a listing with bids when there are 12 hours or fewer remaining damages the buyer experience and can undermine trust in the marketplace''

So basically you do run a risk of being stuck with a winning bidder on an auction you can't cancel and ending up with a negative as a non performing seller.

Even ending an auction with more than 12 hours to go can cause problems if a disgruntled bidder reports you. Ebay will investigate any seller who misuses the option of cancelling an auction early, especially if a bidder thinks it was purely to avoid losing money, ebay have this to say about that :

''Note: Sellers are not permitted to cancel bids and end listings early in order to avoid selling an item that did not meet the desired sale price. This is considered to be reserve fee circumvention. Although there are legitimate reasons for ending a listing early, abuse of this option will be investigated. ''

These are the full rules for ending a listing early:

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/end_early.html

Soo

Fuzzy_2

Thanks for the answers, I thought that might be the case, but yet again people seem to flout the rules quite regularly using this as a reason to pull an auction.

I'll just try the local ads first then put the item on Ebay if I get no takers.

soolin

Thanks for the answers, I thought that might be the case, but yet again people seem to flout the rules quite regularly using this as a reason to pull an auction.

I'll just try the local ads first then put the item on Ebay if I get no takers.

The problem is that ebay don't police themselves, they rely on their users to report auctions. So you are likely to get away with it unless, as I mentioned above, a buyer decides to report you.

Trying the small ads first might be a good idea, although I would suggest checking back through ebays 'completed auctions' for a similair item to see what kind of price it went for. As a rule of thumb, smaller items that have low post and packing costs sell better on ebay than in the small ads, and vice versa.

Soo

sp41700

As you put soolin, unless a buyer reports them.... but becuase they have cancelled the bids there is no registered buyer.

soolin

You can report someone for abusing the 'end auction early' rules, there is a special link on the help pages. Obviously any body who was either watching the item or had their bid cancelled would have both the auction number and the sellers ID. Cancelling an auction doesn't remove it from the database.

Soo

Raggie

When I was selling my Motorbike on E-bay.. I had some problems with Bidders... bidding then retracting bids..

when I spoke with e-bay about this they advised me to end the auction early and re-list the item.

When doing this you do have the oppotunity to state why the auction was ending early and to cancel all bids.. or to make he current high bidder the winner....

This can be done (or could be done), with under 12 hours to go..

The rules may have changed since then.

BTW it is common for peple selling cars/bikes etc, to state the item is being listed elsewhere.. and may be ended early.. without any problems..