E-bay troubles

[pssorens]

Last month, I purchased an item on e-bay. after not hearing fro the seller for two weeks, i sent him a note asking what was up with my item. He responded with a note a week and a half later, stating that he was shipping the item and that he was delayed because of a death in the family and the severe weather England has been having. I received this letter last week. how long should i wait before filing a dispute? I'm not really believing his dead grandfather story has there are numerous complaints about his slow shipping. I understand that items take a little while to ship between England and Montana, but how much longer should i give him before I file a dispute? I have about 14 days left before the time is up? should i file now or closer to the date.

[Heksubah]

One other thing to keep in mind, around the holidays international delivery gets slowed down more than you'd believe. It's been some time, but when I worked for the USPS call center we'd recommend people send stuff in November and even October for some of the more remote countries. England isn't quite so bad with this obviously, but with the timing of when you ordered, and the storms, that could certainly be playing a large factor.

[Andara Bledin]

Rules for buying on eBay:

Check your seller's Feedback, particularly what they leave. (less useful since eBay gimped the process)
Pay with PayPal funded by a credit card - not bank or balance.
Know your deadlines. How late can you complain through eBay, PayPal, your credit card provider, etc.

I would go ahead and file an item not received report. This shouldn't really effect the seller at all, but will let them know that you are serious about wanting at least proof that it has been shipped. Plus, it keeps options open for if you do need to make further complaint. However, I would only do that after checking to see how the seller responds to such things.

My work had a seller we know would leave a, well... interesting response when we had to leave bad feedback about her. We were not disappointed, either.

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

WHich bit of England? My area's just cold, but the snow's pretty much gone. North of the border into Scotlandlandialand is still pretty shitty.

Rapscallion

[PepperElf]

"interesting response"

Oh?

[Jester]

Check your seller's Feedback, particularly what they leave. (less useful since eBay gimped the process)

Huh? Elaborate, please....how did ebay "gimp" the feedback process? (I haven't bought anything off ebay in quite some time, so just wondering....)

[pssorens]

opened the disbute. Finally just got feed up. Raps, the seller is in Cleveland. The bad weather excuse just kind of ticks me off. sigh, never again will I not check feed back first.

[Andara Bledin]

Huh? Elaborate, please....how did ebay "gimp" the feedback process?

Sellers can't leave bad buyers bad Feedback. They basically gave the people with all the power even more protection. A lot of people flat out left eBay over it.

Then they added the stars, so now a scummy buyer can give Positive Feedback, but rate all aspects as 1 Star and actually prevent a seller from listing anything if they don't have a high enough star rating, and only the buyer and eBay knows how many stars they gave anyone, although you can see the star rating for any seller. I auto-rate any seller that gets me my items as 5-stars because the process is so unfair.

"interesting response"

Oh?

The seller in question is a moderately-functional Aspie. I've mentioned her in other threads. My boss gave her an item that she expected to be buying, and he had to tell her no less than a dozen times over the course of half an hour that he was giving it to her before she could grasp that she wasn't expected to give him any money.

Knowing what I know now, things would have been much easier for everybody if he'd just told her it was $0.

Anyway, any non-Positive (and even some Positive) Feedback that was left for her got vaguely-rational, semi-coherent rants in response.

^-.-^