Have you ever purchased something on Ebay and got jilted by the seller? It's a situation where the seller won't send you the item you purchased through buy it now or won through auction. The follow Ebay tips will help you out in this situation.
Every once in a while on a rare occasion we have experienced where a seller will just not send you your item that you bought and paid for.
Why won't an Ebay Seller send me my item?
Why is this happening? There are few explanations:
Item sold too cheap and seller is reneging. The seller put the starting price too low at auction and they got caught with no buyers showing up to their auction and now they just don't want to honor the low seling price. Instead of contacting you to say as much, they decide to not send you the item.
Seller sold the item elsewhere or misplaced it - The seller sold your item in their local store, lost it or had the item listed on multiple platforms and sold it elsewhere and forgot to end the listing on Ebay and because of this they aren't sending you the item because they don't have it.
Seller was a fraudster - The seller was not a legit seller and never had the item in the first place and was scamming Ebay to make a quick rip.
What recourse do I have, if any, when a Seller jilts me out of sending me my merchandise?
Here are the two approaches that we recommend:
Seller contacts you almost immediately and identifies a mistake on their part - If the seller contacts you to inform you that the item they had listed was lost or damaged, they will often offer you a substitute of a greater value to make up for their mistake. It will be up to you to accept their upgrade offer or to allow them to cancel the sale - called "buyer cancelled the sale" where both parties walk away from the transaction and no hard feelings or records of anything ever wrong that took place in their Ebay customer rating or feedback. If the seller has no substitute to offer, then it is solely on you as the buyer to take their word of the problem and make your own judgment call on allowing them off the hook by not opening a case and not giving them negative feedback over it. Typcially in this situation, if you see that the seller is a long time seller with over 98.5% positive feedback, then you probably should give them the benefit of the doubt. However, if you see they are a newbie seller with lower feedback scores, then you should probalby stick it to them and give the negative feedback, as to discourage them from further disenfranchising future buyers.
Seller goes dark on you - It's been a few days, well past the 3 day normal handling time that Ebay requires its seller to mail out its merchandise and you notice no tracking number and the item is not shipped. If the seller is a long time seller with 98.5% or higher feedback, then it is okay to contact them through Ebay and find out what is going on. A lot of Ebay sellers are just mom and pops and small time operators and who konws if they had some kind of family emergency or not and were not able to attend to their daily operations of their Ebay store. If you contact them, they will usually respond and let you know the situation and then it's up to you allow them more time. However.......... if the seller has fewer than 100 items sold and has lower then 95% Ebay rating, then.......DO NOT CONTACT THEM......I repeat..... DO NOT CONTACT THEM. INSTEAD: Open a case through Ebay to let them know you didn't receive your item. Why do this instead of contacting them through their email account on Ebay? If you contact them direclty, they can say that you cancelled the sale and then give you a refund, which is fine, but now they won't receive a ding from Ebay in their rating. If you use Ebay to open a case and they still cancel the item and refund you, they will receive a black mark and ding from Ebay called a "defect." Even though you still got screwed as a customer by not getting the item you ordered, you still get the satifaction of knowing that the seller took a hit on their repuation from Ebay and that the future buyers will maybe be disuaded from dealing with a seller like this with low intgrity. Either way, as buyer, you can still leave negative feedback, but the metric that hurts the seller the most is their seller rating. If they get enough of these dings and black marks, Ebay will suspend their account or shut them down permanently. Just low customer feedback alone won't force Ebay to take any kind of action, which is why you need to open a case when you feel like you were taken advantage of or ripped.
Good News: - There is at least good news when buying on Ebay. If you don't receive your item, be it that the seller decided not to send it to you or that the seller went bankrrupt and pulled off Ebay, Ebay will always have your back and refund your money as long as they show that the seller never sent it and that there was no tracking number ever assigned. You still might be disappointed if you had really really wanted the item and never received it or if you got a too good to be true bargain that got taken away from you, however, if you still get fully refunded, then at least you are also not out the money as well.
We hope you enjoyed our article and happy hunting for great buys and items you are collecting.
Hope this never happens to me.