Seller changing conditions of sale after accepting my offer - how should I proceed?

[Trust NoOne]

Hi all,

It's been a while!

I would appreciate advice as to how I proceed, though I suspect I
will have to move on and chalk this one down to experience.

I placed an offer (through the official ebay process) on a listing for
an "untested" sold as seen Apple Macbook Pro (spares/repair)
motherboard advertised on Ebay. My offer was 5 pounds below the asking
price.

The seller accepted the offer later that evening and sent an invoice
which I duly paid. The seller then sends me a message later that
evening to the effect "I'll be sending the motherboard without its
speaker - I've checked the typical selling price of the speaker and I
would be in effect giving you the motherboard for free. However if you
pay me the full price I will include it. Is this OK?"

I responded that I was not happy with him changing the t&cs after
ending the listing by accepting my offer. If he was unhappy with my
offer he had the choice of not accepting it in the first place.

I have not heard anything further and I suspect he will simply not
send the item and I will have to reclaim my money through eBay. I am
not happy with that I believe is extremely poor form for an eBay
seller.

I appreciate that at the end of the day eBay cannot force a seller to
sell an item if s/he does not want to. I'm just wondering if there is
a way to put in a complaint to eBay re the seller's behaviour if he
refuses to ship the item?

If anyone has come across such a situation in their ebay experience, I
would appreciate your thoughts.

Thank you!

[Theo]

Trust NoOne <use...@pb3.org> wrote:
> I have not heard anything further and I suspect he will simply not
> send the item and I will have to reclaim my money through eBay. I am
> not happy with that I believe is extremely poor form for an eBay
> seller.
>
> I appreciate that at the end of the day eBay cannot force a seller to
> sell an item if s/he does not want to. I'm just wondering if there is
> a way to put in a complaint to eBay re the seller's behaviour if he
> refuses to ship the item?

IANA ebay expert but I don't think there is a way to force the transaction,
so the only recourse is to get the seller into trouble. One way would be to
purchase the item and then do a 'signficantly not as described' (SNAD) claim
when it arrives. There's some risk there (if they insist you send it back
and get grumpy about return postage, which they should legally cover but
ebay doesn't always make it straightforward).

If you were to not reply to the seller's suggestion of downgrading, they
would be forced to either ship something that doesn't match the listing (is
the speaker shown in the listing?) and receive a SNAD claim or cancel the
transaction. After all, you've now paid so the onus is on the seller to
ship the item.

But the 'buyer requested cancellation' option is in the seller dashboard and
it's very easy to press. (I've had to press it a couple of times lately for
buyers who either couldn't read or claimed an 'unexpected emergency' within
minutes of pressing the 'buy now' button and couldn't pickup). It didn't
seem to have consequences for me when I pressed it, it just did a refund.

The 'contact seller' options are unhelpful, and you probably can't start a
return (which is a route to a SNAD case) if the item hasn't shipped.

There is the 'report a seller' option:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/buying/resolving-issues-sellers/reporting-item-issue-seller?id=4022
which has 'they don't intend to complete the sale' as one of the reasons.
I'm not sure if that affects the transaction, or is a more general report.

Although ebay like to railroad you into particular actions (eg why all
complaints are under the 'return' heading, even though there may be nothing
to return) which aren't actually what you wanted, so I wouldn't be surprised
if it turns out to be less than helpful.

Theo

[Trust NoOne]

On 06 Aug 2022 12:29:39 +0100 (BST), Theo

Thank you very much for the incredibly helpful post Theo.

Thankfully I won't (touch wood) have to go through the Ebay complants
route as the seller has had a change of heart and has now shipped the
item complete with its speaker. The picture of the item in the listing
did show the speaker btw.

Fingers crossed this will draw a line under this particular episode.

Thanks again.

[Raj Kundra]

Phone e bay and they will report seller for you and he will have a tick
against his ID and it will on record for future actions. Plus it will
count as a negative mark against his Seller performance, which if you
are trade seller, is very important.