If you're strongly considering ending an auction early, remember that cancelling auctions upsets buyers and upsets eBay! So before you do anything, read this article. There might be a better to way to get what you want.
Reason 1: "I Want to Change my Listing."
If you just want to revise your listing, you don't always need to end it. For listings that have more than 12 hours left to run and haven't received any bids, you can revise almost everything. You can remove the Buy it Now price or reserve price, change the duration of the listing, or add listing upgrades.
If the listing already has one or more bids, you can still add upgrades or add to the description. You can add more pictures too. Once the listing gets into its last 12 hours, however, what you can do becomes far more limited even if it has no bids. You can only revise the description at this point.
It's not a good idea to cancel one listing and ask bidders to bid on another listing for the same item instead. Chances are they'll be annoyed with you and won't bother.
Reason 2: "The Item is No Longer for Sale."
Perhaps you sold the item to someone else, you lost it or it got broken. Whatever happened, if you no longer have the item to sell, you should remove your listing at once. In fact, this is just about the only situation when eBay allows you to. However, if you leave it to the last 12 hours, eBay will refuse to let you remove it, no matter what has happened. This might seem cruel, but keeps people from backing out in the last few hours because they want to try again for a better price.
If you still want to end your listing early, be very careful. The option you almost certainly want to choose is "Cancel bids and end listing early" rather then "Sell item to high bidder and end listing early.". You'll be asked to choose a reason why you ended the listing and then your bidders will be emailed to let them know what happened.
Note that ending a listing early because it looked like it wasn't going to get a good price is against the rules and a very upset eBay could come after you for this.
Copyright 2006 J. Sheridan
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