To my mind you have no obligation to sell the item on ebay, and none of the bidders could expect to have secured the item unless the auction was over and they were still the highest bidder. You are perfrectly within your rights morally and legally to cancel the auction at any stage and for whatever reason.
However, if the buyer found you through ebay, then you would have a moral obligation at least to pay ebay the commision they were due. Legally this would probably be true too, but I doubt if they would be able to prove it or be bothered to try. This is largely a question of how ethical you want to be, and most people would keep shtum - thinking that ebay should not have provided direct contact details for you to circumvent them if they wanted to guard against this. > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: 30 January 2002 14:40 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: OT: Canceling my EBay auction (advice sought) > > > Wendy Beard wrote: > If you don't want to let on that you've sold it outside ebay > (I won't > tell!), just say the dog ate it or something. > I guess that's a valid enough excuse... > > And my buyer advised me to say it got stolen from my car. > C'mon, guys. Would YOU believe it if someone told you that, > after six years of ownership, the item suddenly disappeared > in mid-auction? I wouldn't, either. > > And it's wrong to do what I did, then duck behind a lie. > > I decided to take my lumps: In canceling each bid, I wrote: > "The item has been sold in person to a local buyer." > > In canceling the auction itself, I chose the radio button, > "This item is no longer available for sale." I was planning > to apologize and take my lumps; the EBay cancellation > procedure led me to think that once I clicked End the > Auction, another page would appear on which I could add a > note at the bottom of the auction page, explaining why. Well, > it didn't. Once the auction ended, even I couldn't add my two > cents' worth. > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > mail2web - Check your email from the web at > http://mail2web.com/ . > - > This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, > go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to > visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
