Is Cancellation Permitted?
Yes, of course it is permitted, otherwise we would not do it. Under English law, no contract exists in an auction until the fall of the hammer. The fact that ebay provides a form for the specific purpose of ending an auction early tends to indicate that they allow cancellation. If ebay attempted to curtail a seller's rights to cancel, they would probably be imposing an unfair contract term. Not only that, but their sales volume would probably decline as a result.

Cancellation Costs
If we cancel an auction before the end, we still have to pay the listing fees, but not the commission, so for an auction with a sub £1 starting price, this costs us 30 pence. While this won't break the bank, compared with the £5 we hope to make when a sale is successful, we can't afford to, and wouldn't want to, cancel too many sales.
If we start an auction at a realist figure, around the £235 to £245 mark, and the item fails to sell, we have to pay the £2 listing fee, and we hope you will agree this is a substantial amount compared with the profit we stand to make if the auction is successful.
In all of the above examples, we have ignored our administrative costs in creating, monitoring, and cancelling or processing the sale. Our wage bill is £2,000 per week.

Unreasonable Expectations
Some ebay buyers do not realise that a seller can or may end an auction early. Others seem to believe that it is unfair or unreasonable to do so. To this latter, fortunately small group, we would say that there attitude is unreasonable. Just because a seller enters an item into an auction, it does not place him under any legal or moral obligation to sell that item until such time as the hammer drops, or its electronic equivalent on ebay. Once an auction closes in the normal manner, both buyer and seller are party to a contract to complete the transaction. Even then ebay acknowledge that certain details such as shipping to unusual locations may entail further negotiations.

Unreasonable Person
Today we had a telephone call from a person who we will politely refer to as an unreasonable person, although that is a polite version of what we would actually like to call him.
This person phoned us in January 2004 to tell us he had overbid on a 2004 Uncirculated Gold Sovereign, and asked us to cancel his bid, apparently the auction had not yet finished. We politely explained that we could not cancel his bid, indeed the whole system would get very chaotic if anybody could cancel anybody else's bids, but that he could do this for himself by following ebay's help system. For some reason best known to himself, he failed to do so.
A month later he phoned us again and asked why we had just cancelled a number of auctions. One of our senior staff members politely and patiently explained to him. During a conversation lasting about twenty minutes it became clear just from hearing one side of the conversation, that he was not happy with the explanation, and had also brought up again the matter of the 2004 sovereign. In addition, he was insisting on speaking to the boss. We employ intelligent well educated people who are literate, numerate, polite, and patient. It annoys, nay insults, our staff and me, when somebody insists that the only person who can help them is the ultimate boss. Imagine wanting to complain at Tesco and insisting that you speak to the company chairman directly, and only the chairman will suffice. I volunteered to speak to him, and allowed him to waste about a half hour of my time.
First I got a re-run of the 2004 sovereign story, apparently it was one of his first forays on ebay. This does not explain why he thought he was bidding on a proof sovereign. In our listing we specify about three or more times that the item we are offering is an uncirculated bullion sovereign in mint condition. We also discuss the intrinsic (scrap gold) content of a sovereign, and quote the Royal Mint's selling price (£84.95), so people can compare prices, and make an informed judgement about a sensible price to bid. The only place we mention a proof is after the images, where we explain that we have used photographs of proof coins rather than the uncirculated ones we are offering, we also explain why we use proof photos. We try to make things idiot proof!
This misguided soul tells me that the maximum bid he placed was £100. If he really thought that he was going to be able to buy a proof sovereign 3 months before it was issued at £35 to £40 below issue price, then he must live in cloud cuckoo land. While he accepted that it was his mistake in not reading the offer, he still wanted to complain and moan about this purchase. Our view is that when a buyer makes a bid in an auction, then fails to take the opportunity to retract it, then it is very unreasonable of them to expect us to reduce the price, or agree to cancelling the transaction. In any case, we do not know any method for doing so on ebay without filing a Non Paying Bidder Report, which we presume counts against the buyers ebay record. It would also lose us a sale to the under-bidder (we do not believe in using ebay's 'Second Chance' scheme). If we were to agree to cancel the sale, ebay may suspect that we were colluding with buyers to fraudulently avoid paying them their sales commission. We would and will not do so, and we would prefer not to leave ourselves open even to the slightest suspicion of it.
He had not actually bid on any of our withdrawn items, but was merely thinking about doing so. I was able to inform him that we very rarely cancel any sales with over one minute to run, and it is usually in the last thirty seconds. As he informed us that he did not know he long our auctions still had to run, we do not believe that he would had managed to complete the bidding process in time anyway.
He also seemed to think that it was unfair that we expected an overbidder to complete the transaction, but would withdraw an item which appeared to be about to sell for a loss. We explained that if we allowed an underpriced item to be "knocked down", then we would honour the contract, but that withdrawing it early was our right.
At the end of the telephone conversation, this person informed me that he was still going to ask ebay about cancelling sales, so when I say that I wasted my time, it appears to be an accurate assessment.
We are currently considering whether it would be advisable to bar him from bidding on any of our items, as it may help avoid further problems in future.

98% Satisfaction
Over 98% of our buyers express satisfaction and more with their purchases and transactions with us, indeed we have a high number of repeat buyers. We would prefer to avoid doing business with the small minority of unreasonable people and professional complainers. In addition, why should the service we give our loyal customers be jeopardised because we are having to spend an uneconomic amount of time with the few whingers.

Go Elsewhere
The best advice we could give this particular person is to go elsewhere.
He will find plenty of other sellers on ebay and elsewhere. His main problem will be that many of them may be amateurs, part time dealers, or dishonest people, who fail to accurately describe their goods, or simply don't send them.
He may get an occasional bargain, but he also runs the risk of getting something he didn't bargain for.
We could recommend a seller "boredface" who had been offering a free 2002 gold sovereign with every purchase of an "aerial booster" for £19.99, or a free one ounce krugerrand if you pay between £19.99 and £39.99, two if you pay up to £59.99, and three if you pay up to £79.99 The item listings did say that purchasers should read their website for terms and conditions, but failed to specify a link to, or any other way of finding, said website. Clearly the offers were too good to be true, and made with fraudulent intention. The seller came to our attention because they, like many others, were stealing our copyright images.

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