How to cancel an eBay listing

Some times life happens and you have to cancel an eBay listing. Over the years I have been forced to cancel a couple. Once the item went missing, it was never found. I kept all my eBay items in one spot and I noticed that a necklace was not were I put it. I could not find it and did not have what I needed to remake it. So I had to cancel the listing. What made it hard on me was that I had some good bids on it already. I ended up loosing the sale and still had to pay the insertion fee.

I was very lucky that I noticed it before there was less the 12 hours remaining on the auction and was able to cancel the listing. Other wise I would have had to manually cancel every bid on the necklace right up until the auction was over. That would have been difficult because people bid right up to the last second.

I explained to everyone that had a bid that the necklace was missing so I was cancelling the auction. This way they knew before they received an email from eBay saying their bid was cancelled. Once they knew I would not sell anything unless I had it right there people were ok about it. Not happy, but understood that I did not want to take the chance of selling them some thing I did not have. Good thing I did that as I never did find the necklace.

There are some very strict rules for when you can cancel an eBay listing. EBay does not like it when you cancel a listing and keeps a close eye on why people cancel a listing. Some people have cancelled listings because the bids were not as high as they wanted. So they would cancel the listing, and re-list hopping to get higher bids. That is what a reserve price is for. When people do this eBay sees it as reserve fee circumvention and will investigate if they feel some one is abusing the system to save that fee.

So how do you cancel an eBay listing? First you find the item number, you can get it from your confirmation email, the My eBay page, or the listing View Item Page. Then type the item number into the End My Listing Early form. If there are bids you will have to choose between cancel bids and end listing early or sell the item to the current highest bidder and end listing early. Then you choose the reason for ending the listing early.

OK reasons for ending the listing:
The item is no longer available for sale; changed your mind.
There was an error on the starting price or reserve amount; typo and not checking before posting.
There was an error in the listing; usually you can make a change unless it is under 12 hrs before the auction ends.
The item was lost or broken; the most common reason to end an auction, it happens to everyone some time or another.
Once you have done that the listing will end and is not displayed on eBay and any bidders are emailed that their bid will be cancelled.

This is not some thing you want to ever have to do. You loose sales and sometimes customers. People are less likely to bid on your items if you have cancelled an auction on them before. If I had found the necklace I would have re-listed it and emailed the people who had bids on it to let them know it was available again. Because of the way I handled it they may have been willing to bid again, but maybe not. I could have damaged my customer relations and lost their trust. It shows poor business skills if you cannot keep track of your product, or did not proof read your ad before posting. On the other hand it did show my integrity that I would not take the chance of selling something I no longer had.

Source: eBay