Question about ending an eBay auction early

[k8track]

Is it against the rules to end an auction early? I'd like to know. A lady was selling some things I wanted and there weren't any bids; yet she wouldn't end it early and just sell them to me directly. Someone please give me the 4-1-1 on this so I can rant and rave.

[buttasuperb]

im pretty sure you can end an auction early all the way up until the last 24 hours.

[punkoffgirl]

Yes, you can end auctions early and no, there are no rules against it. Not sure what happens as far as the fees, tho.

[packman75]

I've seen people end auctions with less than a minute left.

If eBay notices (usually through safeharbor reports) that a seller is constantly ended their auctions early, they may think the seller is trying to avoid paying fees on the auctions. The lady may be afraid that eBay will suspend her account.

My guess is, she wants to get as much as she can for the item and she's knows that most of the bidding is usually in the last few hours, so she wants to wait and see what happens.

[Sylentwulf]

You can, but most sellers don't want to since everyone bids in the last 2 hours anyways. I say it's always worth asking, but don't ever expect a seller to end an auction early for you.

[leonk]

You can close an auction closer, but if you buy the item outside of eBay, any "satey" eBay gives you (the authentication of the purchase, the ability to give bad rating to a seller, etc) goes out the door and you're taking a chance.

But if the person has really good rating, I guess it doesn't hurt to ask.. even though eBay doesn't like it too much because they don't get any $$$ from the sale.

LK

[k8track]

Well, here's my beef, and I feel like venting... this lady had seven videos of an 11-video documentary set, and I've been wanting these for years. Well, she'd listed them as seven separate auctions, the first time for $9 apiece, then when they didn't sell, she relisted them for $8 apiece... didn't sell that time, so she relisted them again for $7 apiece. That's when I finally noticed them and asked her if she'd end her auctions early and sell me all seven (I didn't think that was an unreasonable request because they didn't sell the first two times). She was friendly in her reply, but didn't want to end the auctions early for whatever reason. She said she would relist them again, all in one auction, for a BIN of $50, which would include shipping.

Well, two of them sold (just my luck... when I show interest, the rest of the world does too), knocking it down to five left, and she wrote me that she'd put a BIN on the remaining five for $40 when she relisted them. I wrote her back and said, why even bother relisting them?? Just sell them to me directly without going through eBay.

She wouldn't do that for whatever reason and relisted them, and emailed me to tell me so. I could not find the listing for all the tea in China. I used the keywords I'd originally used to find them, as well as every other variant I could think of. I wrote to ask her to at least provide me with the direct link to the auction. She wrote me back the next day and congratulated me on winning, saying, "You must have found the auction!" Nope, I wrote to tell you that I COULDN'T find your auction. Well, someone else snatched them up. Great.

Not a very bright person, she. I was not happy. Wish I could get her blacklisted for her dimness, but that would be a negative waste of energy. I feel as if there were cosmic forces conspiring against me to prevent my buying those videos.

Someone say something to make me feel better.

[Sniderman]

I'm kinda torn as far as this is concerned. I've ended auctions early and been berated for it by bidders. Explanation:

I often sell carts/boardgames/whatever. But many times I sell stuff that's a bit hard to price. So, picture this: You've got an obscure boardgame listed for an opening bid of $9.99. No bids for 6-1/2 days, though the counter says 60 people have seen the auction.

"The opening bid must be too high," you think. So you pull it, intending to re-list with a lower opening bid. That's when all the snipers go berzerk, e-mailing you, demanding to know why the auction ended.

"Had you placed a freakin' bid, I *wouldn't* have," I usually tersely reply. Upon re-listing, I usually get 12 bids in the first hour.

I've learned that most bidding goes on within the last 60 minutes. So, you usually have to wait until that feeding frenzy begins. But, it sometimes doesn't and the auction ends bidless.

However, I will never *NEVER* end an auction early if someone makes an "offer I can't refuse." Gotta go through the auction itself.