eBay-canceling a sale *after* an item is sold

Lil_Sprite

I recently sold some perfume on eBay. I had not posted a price for international shipping (which I thought ruled out international buyers0 and I told eBay I only wanted it posted on the UK Web site, but the winner was from Germany. I don't want to mail to Germany as I'm concerned about any customs problems sending perfume (I know people do it all the time, but you're not supposed to if the perfume is over 70% volume alcohol). I don't want any issues, so I wrote the individual and explained the situation and said I'm sorry, I can't send to Germany. He or she had not paid yet, and still haven't, so I'm guessing they accepted this (they didn't write back).

I wanted to clear the auction off the books (meaning get rid of the item as showing that it was awaitig payment and if possible, not have to pay fees for selling something that I didn't get paid for, though it was so cheap that I don't care if I have to pay those fees).

I emailed eBay, and they told me I can't cancel the sale because I hadn't noted that I wouldn't mail internationally. I had thought putting no option for international postage meant that, but apparently it doesn't. They said I have to send it unless the buyer agrees to cancel the order. Well, the buyer hasn't written back at all, and hasn't gone ahead and paid, so I'm guess he/she agreed. If I write back now and say I will sell it, I don't know if they'd even respond. If the buyer agrees to cancel, there is a process to clear the order that would involve a bit of trouble and would require the buyer to later respond to an email directly from ebay.

What I want to know is, if this person agrees to not making me ship it to Germany (as he/she seems to have by not replying), what happens if I do nothing further? Just leave it sitting on eBay showing as awaiting payment?

Otherwise, what should I do now? Anyone been in this situation? I just don't sell that much and hadn't realized these kinds of complications could arise (and in honestly, if it were anything other than perfume which runs a small risk of causing customs issues, I'd just mail it to this person, anyhow).

mrcol1000

There are no custom issues sending any legal items between UK and Germany. European Union and all that. You just need an airmail sticker on the package.

soolin

mrcol1000 wrote: »

There are no custom issues sending any legal items between UK and Germany. European Union and all that. You just need an airmail sticker on the package.

That is not necessarily true. I had stock of a legitimate item which I would have been prohibited from sending to Germany. It made selling on ebay very difficult as it meant to be safe I had to prohibit all of the Europe options.

Many top perfume sellers say in their listings that they cannot ship to germany, so there is obviously a problem with perfume and German customs.

Also worth noting the UK Royal Mail restrictions as well:

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?mediaId=36200675&catId=400044

Prohibited goods:

Perfumes and AftershavesPerfumes and Aftershaves that are classed as flammable are prohibited. Non-flammable items may be accepted but there are restrictions based on alcoholic content.

soolin

Sorry OP, I completely failed to answer your actual question.

The sale can't technically be cancelled and the buyer remains eligible to leave you feedback. If you want to recover your FVFs then you can do a mutual cancellation which gets sent to the buyer for their agreement.

cyberbob

To stop your listing be able for international as well as the postage options you need to change your seller preferences and tick the box that doesn't allow bidders from countries you do not send to.

If you just leave that awaiting payment you will still have to pay Final value fees which will be 10% of the final price. To get these back you can request a mutual cancellation. Link HERE. I believe the buyer could still leave you feedback though

cyberbob

Soolin beat me to it

Lil_Sprite

Thanks so much! My head is spinning from dealing with various problems today, but I will write the winner by tomorrow and see if they will do an official cancellation thingy. I still am a bit flabbergasted that someone would bid on an item that had no international shipping listed without even asking if/how much the shipping would be to his country! But I guess I'm the silly seller who didn't know how to prevent him/her from bidding in the first place! Doh!

Lil_Sprite

Edit: nevermind, it doesn't seem to be a problem, lol

I have gone into the settings on some other auctions I have running and told it to only sell to buyers in the the UK. And I got a message that the price of my items would show in pounds on the auction site, but the invoice from Paypal would be in U.S. dollars! How do I change that? It may confuse people, not to mention if they pay Paypal with a credit card they will probably incur conversion fees for U.S. dollars. Thanks for any help!

Lil_Sprite

Oh no, a new issue! I iniated the "cancel sale" option. I had written the buyer myself last week and got no response, so I just assumed he agreed and that was that. Wrong! He denied the option to cancel the sale and said he'd gotten perfume minatures many times and there was no problem. Um, yes, you probably have, but that doesn't mean people were *supposed* to send them! I shouldn't have expected this person to be reasonable when it seems pretty unreasonable to bid on an auction that says it doesn't offer international shipping when you don't live in that country!

What can I do? I don't really want bad feedback as I've never had bad feedback yet (but I don't use ebay a lot and my feedback is 80-something, so one bad one would be noticable). Then again, I think I'm never selling on eBay again after this experience, so I don't really care. What should I do?

soolin

As per post 4 there is nothing you can do to prevent a buyer leaving feedback.

The only way to stop them is to do a full NPB dispute (which would not have been approrpiate in this case) and for them to have failed to respond.

If you don't care about using ebay again future then a neg won't hurt, so don't worry. Just walk away from the account. Alternatively close it down entirely before you face any problems with suspension and then in the future if you do want to go back to ebay just open a new one.

Lil_Sprite

soolin wrote: »

As per post 4 there is nothing you can do to prevent a buyer leaving feedback.

The only way to stop them is to do a full NPB dispute (which would not have been approrpiate in this case) and for them to have failed to respond.

If you don't care about using ebay again future then a neg won't hurt, so don't worry. Just walk away from the account. Alternatively close it down entirely before you face any problems with suspension and then in the future if you do want to go back to ebay just open a new one.

So does it seem best that I should not mail the item to the person and just let it be an unhappy buyer?

Edit to add: And how can I prevent the buyer from going ahead and paying Paypal and creating a whole new issue? The request was automatically sent when the auction ended, and I only initiated the cancellation with eBay in order to clear the payment request.