Feedback for sellers who don’t ship or respond

[jasonite1]

I recently bought an item. The item was supposed to ship within 3 business days. It’s been 5 business days. There is no tracking number and eBay is not showing the item as shipped. The seller has not responded to my message 3 times inquiring about the shipping. Although I have the option soon to cancel the sale and request a refund if the item doesn’t show up by Monday. 
My question — can I leave negative feedback for the seller if I have to cancel and get a refund and have no communication or explanation? Does the seller have any consequence for this nonsense?

[alcoforever]

First, you don't know the item hasn't been shipped.   It could be just that there haven't been any package scans yet.   Occasionally, packages are only scanned once - at delivery.

Second, you cannot cancel the transaction until at least one day past the last estimated delivery date.

If the cancellation is successful, you can leave neg FB for the seller but it has no consequences for the seller.   Also, depending on the seller's status, it may be removed.   If you want the FB to stick, leave a neutral.   To my knowledge, ebay has not yet indulged in removing neutral FB.

What does have consequences for the seller is the defect they would receive for not fulfilling the order.

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

Some sellers do not upload tracking info (extremely frustrating)

Some sellers opt to message tracking info instead of upload it (for me, extremely irritating)

Some sellers may forget to convey tracking info entirely. (Extremely unprofessional).

It may or may not have shipped. Day after last estimated delivery date, open a case for "Item Not Received"

[jasonite1]

Of course, as I mentioned there is no tracking number but also there’s been radio silence from the seller, and this is not a high volume seller. It may show up, it may not. I’ll know shortly.  If the seller just never responds, then refunds my money, could the seller repost it for sale again for a higher amount?

I find it pretty infuriating that eBay would not let buyers knock a seller’s rating if they behave like this.  As a buyer, I would want to know how reliable a seller is before tying up several hundred dollars for a few weeks on an item that may never ship or exist. 

[suzysemporium]

Depending on what the item is, the seller may have opted to mail the item in a regular envelope with a stamp or two, and no tracking. These are more for smaller light items such as stamps, trading cards, postcards, and etc. You can tell if you paid around a $1, or if you paid close to $4 for a first class package with tracking.

Some sellers use other discount shipping sites such as pirate ship, and forget to add the tracking to ebay. You are not going to really know if the seller shipped the item, and is not responding. If they are ghosting you completely. Maybe even have gotten into a serious accident where they can not do anything from cancel sales to contact buyers. They don't have a secondary person to handle things, or close the store in the worst case scenario.

The only thing you can do right now is as ajs_coins_and_alchemy said open a case for item not received as soon as you can. This will either force the buyer to respond, or Ebay will automatically refund you if the buyer does not respond in a certain amount of time. After so many defects, Ebay will suspend first and later shut down the buyers store if he never ships his items at all.

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

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@jasonite1 wrote:

Of course, as I mentioned there is no tracking number but also there’s been radio silence from the seller, and this is not a high volume seller. It may show up, it may not. I’ll know shortly.  If the seller just never responds, then refunds my money, could the seller repost it for sale again for a higher amount?

I find it pretty infuriating that eBay would not let buyers knock a seller’s rating if they behave like this.  As a buyer, I would want to know how reliable a seller is before tying up several hundred dollars for a few weeks on an item that may never ship or exist. 

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100% Absolutely without a doubt. 

[soh.maryl]

Why would several hundred dollars be tied up for a few weeks?

There was an estimated delivery date in the listing.  You did not expect its arrival until at least then.

If it does not arrive by that date, you can open an INR case the day after and you are refunded pretty quickly.  

[mudshark61369]

@jasonite1,

"as I mentioned there is no tracking number but also there’s been radio silence from the seller, and this is not a high volume seller". 

If the seller hadn't sold anything in over a year, or only a few low priced items in the last year, they may have run into ebay's 21 day hold on Payments that they place on all new or returning sellers first few payments.  That hold can also be applied if they sell something that is much more expensive that what they usually sell.  Did you check their feedback profile page to see if that have ever sold before or in the last year? New or infrequent sellers can have a fair number of feedback an a 100% rating, but all for buying at least in the last year.  Just one reason why you should check the feedback profile of any seller you intend to buy from.

Many new or infrequent sellers do not know about the hold and do not ship items because their payment status is marked as Pending, so they don't think they have been paid.  They could also take your messages about shipping as an attempt to scam them.

If you find that the seller is new/returning etc. You could try messaging them again and tell them if they have not shipped, because their payment is Pending, to do a google search for "Payments on hold, ebay"  and another for "How does ebay know when to release funds"  If they do the searches they will get the info they need to complete the sale. Maybe they will respond to that message.

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

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@soh.maryl wrote:

Why would several hundred dollars be tied up for a few weeks?

There was an estimated delivery date in the listing.  You did not expect its arrival until at least then.

If it does not arrive by that date, you can open an INR case the day after and you are refunded pretty quickly.  

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Nope. In my experience money has always been tied up for 2.5 wks or more.

-Handling time of 3 days and shipping time of 4 days, you're looking at a week before the last estimated delivery date. (1 week)

-When I have filed my INRs I explicitly recall being given another week long wait because "the item may still be on the way" (1 week)

That alone is 2 weeks

Now, this is not common, but let me add another point here... if the order was low value, I don't care that my $$ is tied up. But I do care when the order is HIGH VALUE and my money is tied up. My two very notable experiences are $3,600 & $11,900 Orders.

These high value orders require manual review by the HIGH VALUE CLAIMS TEAM. That usually takes 48 hours.

When the order was 3600, it required first level review, when the order was 11,900, it required two layers of review, including a supervisor sign-off extra 24 hours

So, in my experience, my run of the mill orders tie up my cash for a minimum of 2 weeks, my high value orders take 2.5 weeks. It just adds insult to injury...

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[susanvaldo]

Ebay is now removing negative & neutral feedback, what a scam. You can try, but it will get scrubbed. Still it might warn other buyers tor a limited time before they get to it.
Expect sellers to blame you for something in the replies.   

[susanvaldo]

Ebay now has a policy in writing that they will remove neutrals too. I was noticing how many sellers suddenly had all positive. Makes them even less reliable as Amazon. 
I’d open a not received claim as soon as you can. Ebay will probably demolish that next. 

[susanvaldo]

Yep. Goodwill now sells online btw. 
Give ebay enough rope, & sure enough, they’ll hang themselves. 

[jasonite1]

He’s not high volume but also not infrequent… looks like 98 transactions in feedback for past year. 

The item I bought is somewhat bulky and weighs like 35 pounds or so, so I don’t think it could be shipped without tracking info.

[jasonite1]

I find it pretty scammy that eBay would scrub negative or neutral feedback for nonsense where a seller won’t respond to inquiries and does not ship an item. I generally buy small things, occasionally sell, but this would certainly dissuade me from trusting eBay with making any larger purchases since their feedback system appears to be NOT HONEST.

[scotthummel22]

I posted something similar. I feel bad for all the good sellers who are going to lose good business because buyers are going to get burned enough times and leave Ebay.

I'd like to see Ebay install an automation feature to flag suspicious sellers. For example, a seller has excellent feedback for years. Then suddenly in the past six months, the feedback goes into the tank. Some sort of automated flagger suggesting Ebay look into that would benefit honest sellers and Ebay as a whole. Maybe the account was hijacked, and the real seller would like Ebay to get to the bottom of it.

I ended up going through Facebook, and the Ebay rep thanked me for alerting them.

I've learned, though, that posting on this forum brings out a lot of keyboard-warrior contrarians.