I buy occasionally and sell a lot on ebay and the notion that the power is with the seller (per Mangetout’s points) is laughable. Ebay is VERY buyer tilted in terms of overall policies and enforcement of same. Someone with good feedback is usually going to be more proactive about solving problems than any retail store you can imagine.
A refund takes seconds to process. When you say you don’t have it do you mean it’s a pending echeck he put in and you are waiting for it to clear, or that it has not even shown up as refund (pending or otherwise) at all? The first is not in his power to make faster if it’s the second there is (IMO) no excuse at this point for an item that was never even delivered the refund should have been processed immediately.
I don’t have anything at all, no pending transaction, no product, no nothing. And it appears the seller is now blaming me for all his troubles. He says:
(italics mine) Apparently asking for a refund before 21 days have elapsed is called “harassing.” Since all other sellers have shipped me product within 48 hours of my payment, it seems unlikely that this one needs 21 days.
Time for me to escalate?
Escalate.
Will you be able to file a complaint after 21 days? Leave feedback?
“Look cops, I accidentally withdrew all the money in the vault at a bank where I don’t have an account while holding a gun. Stop harassing me until I drive to Mexico, then I’ll do the right thing!”
Unfortunately, yes.
As a quick aside, I just ordered something from Ebay and got a shipped notification with a tracking number 19 minutes after my order confirmation. I think that’s a record.
Given how sketchy this sounds in this particular scenario I think you need to open an ebay case just for documentation purposes. If you paid with paypal you will get your refund one way or the other. Link below for case opening instructions.
eBay Customer Service didn’t receive my item
It’s possible that your payment to the seller went through as an eCheck - once in process, these can’t be refunded until they clear, but that doesn’t take 21 days.
It may be that the 21 days thing is because the seller has a funds delay restriction in place, or it might be that he’s trying to make you miss the window in which you car initiate a dispute.
Start a dispute as soon as possible and don’t allow it to be resolved until you have your money back.
This has been my experience also. I gave a neg once, because the product was a POS compared to the picture, and the seller came back and offered a full refund without my returning the merchandise. Full refund within days. The seller had something like 100k transactions, and my scrawny little neg would make, what, .00001 percent difference on his rating?
Also, I’m missing something where posters say a neg is almost impossible…what am I missing???
It makes little difference to that rating, but sellers need to manage buyer satisfaction carefully because there are penalties under the hood that you don’t see as a buyer.
In a more perfect world, that would be a wholesome and good thing.
Sellers can’t neg buyers, at all.
That link says to open a case if no resolution has been reached with the seller for 3 business days, so I think I’ll wait until Thursday, but I definitely will file a claim, or whatever it’s called. That 21 days is beginning to look suspicious.
Assuming you do need to file the dispute at 3 days, resist all temptation to close it or ‘resolve early’ until you have the money back (for example, don’t close it just because the seller promises something). You only get one shot.
Even some of the dispute escalation options look like they should bring about a refund, but if you use them before the appropriate point, just seem to end up closing the dispute and leaving you empty handed.
I’d also keep an eye out to see if he relists the item, that would just go to prove that his friend didn’t sell it on Craigslist.
Good point. So far, he hasn’t relisted it.
I think what’s going on is that the seller is fairly new, and is caught in that BS where Paypal holds funds for x amount of days. However, that’s not your problem. I say escalate now. You’ll get your money back much sooner than 21 days. There’s no reason for you to wait, as the seller has blown you off and you won’t get anywhere with him.
I’d be PISSED that he told me not to harass him. He has MY MONEY and is being rude about it, no matter that it isn’t his fault. This deserves a neg, IMO. I gave him the benefit of the doubt earlier in this thread, but at best this guy’s ignorant and needs to learn that ya need to secure your inventory before you sell it!
As a seller, if I were unimaginably in that position, I’d refund the buyer out of my own money immediately, and wait the three weeks for the reimbursement. It wasn’t the buyer’s fault! This crap makes me see red-it drives buyers off eBay.
If you don’t get your money back via eBay within a few days, give them a call and explain the situation. You could even do that now-I bet it will be resolved pretty quickly.
I hope I’m making sense-I’m pissed at this idiot, and I’m sorry you had this experience, Musicat. Not all of us are like that.
This is one of the reasons I moved over to Amazon. Still get cheap prices and absolutely none of the bullshit that goes along with it.
But I agree with everyone else. Start escalating now, you can always drop it if the money shows up in your account (but not before it’s actually there) and it might be what he needs to light a fire under his ass.
There’s a good chance it’s all legit, there’s also a chance it’s not.
If he’s just being slow this will speed him up, if he’s trying to rip you off (in a ‘the check is in the mail’ kind of way) this will tell him you’re not messing around.
Also, I wouldn’t tell him your going to escalate it, just do it and if he asks you why I would just say “I escalated it because you cancelled the auction after I won and you’ve refused to refund my money. I’ll call them off as soon as the money is back in my account.”
Just act like you’ve done this before and it’s business as usual.
Also, with the complaint, I wouldn’t make it all wordy. Just short and simple. You paid him, he didn’t send the item and he won’t return the money, period.
That’s just a little slanted. I’d say I won the auction, paid in full, seller refused to ship product, refund promised but hasn’t happened.
I tried to enter the complaint sequence, but the stock message says to wait until Friday, which would be 5 business days – the date I would have expected to receive the goods, so I haven’t gone any further yet. I can wait until Friday, and I don’t think I’ll lose any rights if I do so. I intend to play this game the proper way.
This isn’t always possible - if the buyer’s money is held as an uncleared eCheck, and the seller has no surplus funds in his account, there may be no safe and sound way to immediately refund the transaction, especially if the seller has no credit card registered against the PayPal account.
In the above scenario, even if the seller tries to refund by means of a new payment transaction, several things may happen, including:
[ul]
[li]This second transaction may itself arrive as an eCheck - so now there are two uncleared transactions at play[/li][li]This transaction will not be regarded by eBay/PayPal as related to the original payment in any way - and this means things can get nasty - the buyer could accept the second transaction, then still pursue a refund of the first - and eBay will probably let that happen.[/li][/ul]
It sounds like the eBay system may be aware of an imposed delay in the money becoming available to the seller (i.e. an account limitation at his end, or your payment went as an eCheck).
I think you’re taking the right approach (it’s not like you can do much else right now).
Just remember to let the dispute process unfold naturally:
If the seller refunds, it may close on its own, or you may get the option to confirm all is well.
If he doesn’t, just be wary of escalation options that say things like ‘I want to resolve this dispute without waiting for a response from the other party’ - because that really means ‘I want to give up’.
For instance?
It’s part of the set of internal metrics you are judged by as a seller by ebay. Under the hood there is finely parsed series of customer satisfaction levels based of ALL feedback and buyer surveys after the sale. There are pages of these measures. This determines whether you get various discounts on the fees ebay charges sellers. This can amount to hundreds to thousands of dollars in charges and fee differentials out of the fees ebay charges sellers.
Another example is that I kiss off about 3000 - 5,000 a year in lost ebay seller discounts credits because they ding me because I will not do free shipping which they (ebay) really wants you to do.