Opened Item Not Arrived Case but ...

[diytoolbox]

A shock experience of buying from eBay recently.  The seller is a business seller who seemingly converted from Private Seller to Business Seller recently.

The item was a book which was very expensive, but needed it for my studies.  But after 10 days of waiting, the book never arrived.  Contacted the seller, and no reply from the seller.  Then seller replied saying they will find the tracking number.  But there was nothing after that.

I opened the Item Not Arrived Case on eBay, but I have to wait further 7 days until eBay will step in.  The seller never responds even after the Case Open.  I have no book I paid for, my money is in seller's account, and just waiting for the refund.   A very disappointing buying experience.

[diytoolbox]

Just to add, the seller never added tracking number, but marked it as DISPATCHED.  No idea if the item has been even dispatched or not at all.

[tressygirl]

When you open a case for item not received,  it gives the seller 3 days to accept and refund you.

If they don't on day 4, the option to escalate should be there.

Escalate the case, ask eBay to step in, and they'll force the refund.

@diytoolbox 

[diytoolbox]

The case was opened on 19th.  eBay says to contact them for stepping in, on 25th if the seller didn't respond, or no resolution had been made.  That is a week.  Not 3 days.

Today is 22nd, and there is no response from the seller, and I am still waiting for the refund, so I could look for the same book on Amazon.  It looks like I must wait until 25th just for eBay to step-in to help on the case.

[papso22]

See if the 'ask ebay to step in' link appears sooner than that.

[tressygirl]

It shouldn't but wonder if they are taking into account a weekend not being business days.

Wait till 3 business working days have passed it is timed to the minute , the option to escalate should be there.

@diytoolbox 

[diytoolbox]

I checked the Case page again, and there is nothing I can do.  It just says contact them on 25th.

Will not be buying any more books on eBay ever again.

[missdollydaydream]

Now you have opened a case with eBay. Don't correspond further with seller. Just follow the case and respond to eBay as and when necessary.

[sml192]

The seller is given 3 business days (Mon - Fri) in which to respond, not including the day the claim is opened.

Therefore, if you opened the claim on the 19th then that would make the date for asking eBay to step in as the 25th as the 3 days given to the seller would be the 20th, 21st, and 24th. 

[m25jet]

In addition to what has already been covered here in the replies that you have already received, if you decide to leave neutral or negative feedback for the seller then I would advise you to hold off of doing so until after the case has been closed, whether the case closes automatically as a result of the seller issuing you with a refund, or as a result of eBay getting involved if you end up having to escalate the case and eBay subsequently force a total refund of the money that you paid to the seller.  If eBay do have to step in to sort the matter out then it would be extremely unlikely that the seller would be able to persuade them to remove any negative feedback that you may choose to leave in relation to the transaction, unless you were to say something that seriously violated one or more of eBay's rules regarding what you can and cannot say in feedback.

[diytoolbox]

Yes, good point.  We are not into leaving rushed feedbacks anyway.  We always do it after the transaction is totally completed, and  in this case will do so after we get the book we paid for, or getting the full refund.

We are still hoping that seller will post the book to us, but with no replies from the seller, it looks doubtful.

It is strange that we bought a few books from the overseas book sellers in USA and Germany, and their books all arrived promptly with good tracking updates.   We never imagined that a UK based business seller could do this to us - having received our money, but doesn't send the book or respond to our enquiries and even Item Not Received Case.

[m25jet]

@diytoolbox wrote:

It is strange that we bought a few books from the overseas book sellers in USA and Germany, and their books all arrived promptly with good tracking updates.   We never imagined that a UK based business seller could do this to us - having received our money, but doesn't send the book or respond to our enquiries and even Item Not Received Case.

It's actually quite shocking to think that it would be easier to buy books from overseas wtih no hassle, yet when buying a book from a UK registered seller it results in a load of aggravation.  What I always try to do first of all whenever I want to buy a book is to see if I can get it from my local branch of Waterstones - in many cases if they don't have it in stock I give them the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and ask if they can source it for me and let me know when they've got it in.  In many cases that actually works quite well; however, if you don't have a local branch of Waterstones then it may be worth seeing if you can find the book that you want on Amazon.  I've ordered books on Amazon in the past when I haven't been able to find them for sale in Waterstones, and have received them within two days at the most after I placed the order, sometimes even receiving the book the following day - including during weekends - if I ordered the book using Amazon Prime.

With regards to buying books via an online selling platform it can often cost more to buy books from Amazon, but given the speed and quality of service that they often provide, something which eBay have never been able to match since they were first established, I would say that in many cases it's worth paying that bit extra in order to get the book.

As a result of the above I often now only buy books on eBay when all other options have been exhausted and it appears that eBay is the only place where I can actually purchase the book that I want to buy.

[diytoolbox]

Yeah, got the refund from eBay, and left a negative feedback to the seller.  It was actually my wife eBay account, not this one we used for buying the book.

It took long time to get the refund we feel, when the seller was not responding to our inquires and even INA case opening.

My advice is, don't buy highish priced books on eBay.  When things go wrong by either wrong items delivered or item not arrived, it will take too long time to get refunds.  You feel like you have given away interest free loans to the seller who never posted the books that you paid for.

It would be better if the refund timing window is quicker than now (ideally 2 days including even weekends) which took a week, plus 10+ days of waiting for the book after the payment sent.  Almost 3 weeks lost waiting for the book, or the refund.  Not a good experience.

[barry.110]

I hope in the feedback that you left you didn't mention having to open a case or to get Ebay to step in to get the refund, this is enough for a savvy seller to get the feedback removed.

[diytoolbox]

Not sure if eBay wants to keep the sellers who don't post items when they were paid, and accepted the payments for the items, and help even keep their feedbacks clean.  It would be up to eBay.  Have more of the poor performing sellers on board, then buying from eBay will decrease even more.

[sml192]

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@barry.110 wrote:

I hope in the feedback that you left you didn't mention having to open a case or to get Ebay to step in to get the refund, this is enough for a savvy seller to get the feedback removed.

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That certainly used to be the case, however, there is no longer any reference to this in eBay's updated 'Feedback Policy'. 

Still sensible not to mention cases or refunds though.