Is it just me or does Ebay suck for buyers?

Ebay is not just a shopping venue. It is an auction house.
When you go to a real auction, and get the highest bid on something, you can not just pussy out afterwards.
Do not blame ebay for your own ignorance of its nature.

If this was an auction, I agree with @ragingloli . Presumably you were bidding against someone else and raised the price until you were the winner. You took it away from someone else and are now forcing the seller to spend time placing another ad and (maybe) causing them to pay eBay for the current ad. That is how an auction works.

eBay sucks for sellers.

When people back out of a contracted sale, the seller has to pay for the inconvenience. They are also almost always held responsible for shipping issues, and buyer fraud (I’m totally returning this! See, here’s my shipping confirmation! Oh, did you receive a box full of old socks? Sucks for you, I got my refund AND your item!) is ridiculous.

There is a fee for putting something up for sale.
When you pussy out of the deal, he has to put it up again, costing him that fee twice.

@ragingloli I used to sell on Ebay. I know the nature of the site. In this case it was not a bid. I purchased it outright, then tried to cancel.
I don’t know what fees would be involved due to my cancelling @Seek_Kolinahr when they hadn’t even pulled it off the shelf. They certainly had not shipped it.

How recently did you sell on eBay? There are listing fees. There are sale fees from PayPal. And now, more listing fees, and more sale fees for the seller.

Good point. I don’t even remember. It’s been years. When I sold, listing fees were nominal. I would imagine that if you have a lot of the same stock that makes the fees even lower. A notice came up said 31 boots had been sold in the last 24 hours, and the ones I bought were the last in stock (supposedly,) so I can’t imagine they’d have any problem reselling. It’s going to come down to customer service and whether the $5.00 listing fee (or whatever) is worth a negative review. If the seller ever responds to my message I’ll let you guys know. I may just point out that the seller wouldn’t cancel the order, but accept responsibility for why.

I’ve been buying and selling a lot lately. I haven’t had any problems.

So have you had a buyer cancel almost immediately after they ordered? Was it a problem? Remember, this was more of a retail situation, NOT a bid.

It sucks for buyers for other reasons (mostly just user-friendliness), but not for that. eBay is pretty open about the fact that when you buy something, whether an in the form of an auction, best offer, or buy now, you have a contractual obligation to purchase the product. It can be a huge inconvenience for sellers to cancel an order. If yours were the last in stock, the buyer is going to have to re-list. It sucks to not be able to return something that you regret buying, but buyer’s remorse isn’t really a good enough excuse to break a contract, even if sellers do sometimes allow the cancellation.

Thank you @Fly.

I have had wonderful success buying on ebay, for 10 years or more. I guess it depends on the buyer.

I’ve bought on Ebay before too, but never tried to cancel. I should have been more aware. :( I guess I can always resell them.

Well, the seller hasn’t responded. The item hasn’t shipped. It still shows as “sold” though. There are no updates whatsoever. That by itself is not cool.