From the sellers perspective I can understand why they may not want to sent out a replacement (what if it also is lost?) and gave you a refund instead.
I do read negative and neutral feedback, but it is funny how many positive feedback I have read that actually tell the truth of a poor experience because of the fears of getting negative feedback back.
Funny how the seller is only worried about the negative now that it's all gone pear-shaped...
The seller stonewalled as long as possible until the dispute was escalated, and then still tried to finagle a positive rating? That alone should earn them a big ol' fat negative, even if it's ultimately resolved.
This is how I feel. If a seller demonstrates good faith by co-operating and good communicaton I will give them as much time as I can. But if they respond to an issue with delay after delay, trying to run out the clock, then I don’t have a problem giving them negative feedback, regardless of whether I get a refund or not.
Be careful of fake refund emails too, I had that happen a while ago on an ebay transaction gone bad. I opened up a dispute through ebay and quickly received a Paypal refund notice. Except it was a little too quickly. There was actually no refund; the email had come from the seller’s account and was masquerading as a Paypal email in the hopes that I would accept it and forget.
Of course they got negative feedback and I informed Paypal of the scam. I got my real money back too.
Nice catch, photon1k! Using “View all of my transactions” made the refund appear!
All,
I’ll respond to earlier comments here:
1) Re. asking them to re-send. This is one seller that sent without tracking that I had commented on awhile ago in a different thread. More clearly, this is one seller that TOLD me that they did not have tracking for the shipment. My theory at the time was that they do have tracking but didn’t want to provide the tracking #.
Having said that, I really wanted the batteries, they seemed like a pretty good deal. 2x10440 for $7 AUD, and I order 2 pairs (total 4 10440s).
2) Having said that, I feel that they lied to me, in that when I asked them to re-send, they said that they were out-of-stock, and yet when I check the item on Ebay, it’s still there, and (currently) showing 29 available.:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/180964379557?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&\_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
Jim
All that negative feedback and not one response posted by the seller with an explaination or resolution shows that this seller just doesn’t care. I wonder how many people never bothered to take action and just wrote it off as a loss.
LOL, I'll sell you four 10440s I don't have either for only $5/pair! That's an even better- oh wait...
The seller can be pretty flexible with the pricing when they're selling things that don't actually exist.
i had that kind of case once on audio interconnect cable.
they sent me a counterfeit and after I sent a doom feedback, the seller refunded and request for feedback revision.
I simply said that having a problem with the item & seller but eventually they solved it.
but still, I reported to ebay for counterfeit product.
I think you did the right thing. As a regular ebay buyer, I appreciate honest feedback from my fellow buyers. Once you get the refund, you might want to update the feedback to say you finally got it. But even then, I think you should leave your original comments.
I sometime give follow up feedback too when seller has refunded me and the item appear like 2 or 3 months later.
but that’s very rare only couple times in hundred orders.
it would depend on the sellers reason not having them for me
+1
Sellers cant leave negative or neutral, they can leave only positive feedback, thats how it work at Ebay AFAIK.
I see it was changed in May 2008. 
But I still see negative positive feedback. Maybe these buyers don’t know they can leave negative feedback. I have seen sellers respond unpleasantly to feedback as well.
Dimbo’s Rule One: Never, ever, EVER tell lies unless you’re in the Fiction section. Corollary to Rule One: Dimbo hasn’t seen the Fiction section since 1974.
Point #2: The feedback mechanism eBay provides is for US, the other Buyers. Not the sellers!! How else are we supposed to know whom to (not) trust??? Look at it this way: If the German people had the honor to honestly tell the world (and each other) what Hitler was up to before he became Reichchancellor, we’d never have had a WWII. Ditto for us ugly Americans and either of the Rooseveldts (e.g.) or the Bushes, or… “Full Disclosure” is an integral part of Honesty, which is likewise integral to Honor. If you want to tell me that honor doesn’t matter to you, I will apologize for the bother and be on my way.
But…
Point #3, I don’t think eBay allows you to change feedback once it’s entered…
Point #4: “fronting” — acting as a retail distributor of a manufacturer( s ) product is a perfectly legitimate, useful business model. Until people like this come along.
IIWY, I’d already have a PayPal dispute, an eBay complaint, a phone call to their local government officials, a “Shame On You” ad in their local paper, all of it. Good feedback must be earned, and it’s as easy as can be — just say what you can do and do what you say. Bad feedback must be endured like the scars of our mistakes; and can only be diluted with lots of Good Feedback (assuming they can earn good FB, of course). If feedback really mattered, they wouldn’t be getting bad FB in the first place. It’s Just Too Easy to do it right. Call it “toughlove”, call it “business”, call it whatever you want, but if you change your feedback like they’ve asked, I will call it:
“Lying”.
YBTJ.
Dim
The chain-of-events you listed doesn’t perfectly fit eBay’s dispute resolution process instructions, but it’s obvious you just didn’t take the time to grind through the “back and forth” reporting each detail in chronological order. In any case, a month is past time to escalate this to “management”! It does not serve eBay’s Best Interest to leave you swinging in the wind like this.
These two statements don’t make sense. If the seller “did a refund”, it would have hit PayPal before the eBay Message hit your Inbox…
Tacticool response: Accuse eBay (the sender of the “did a refund” message) of lying, since the “did” is obviously false. Besides the fact that they have no business sending you false messages, then the seller will have to answer to you, the eBay community AND the message-sending “powers that be” at eBay.
“Looks like another username reset is a-coming, Marge! What are we going to call ourselves this time?”
+1 We’ll all be better off without him/her.
+1
(but I suspect you’re preaching to the choir here, as the OP did mention going “back and forth”, which basically sounds like a month of huge hassle not worth bothering to detail out here…)
As a long time (and now very infrequent ebay seller), anyone who offers to sell something they don’t have deserves whatever feedback they get. While in the past it was impossible to revise feedback, ebay now allows sellers to ‘request a feedback revision’.
As for the refund, PayPal is a little strange in that regard. How soon you see the refund depends upon some things about the sellers paypal account. If they have money in the account, you get the refund immediately, if not, and there is no credit card to back up the refund, it is done as an electronic check, which can take 3-5 days to clear in the USA, I have no idea how long it takes for such a transaction outside the USA/Canada. However even with an electronic check based refund, you should still see something that shows the payment is in process. Take a good look at the email headers and make sure it was really sent from PayPal. PayPal messages (especially your account has been suspended) are very commonly faked.
Lastly, I try to avoid doing business with any seller with a feedback rating below 99.5%. The reality is that some buyers cannot be satisfied no matter
what you do, but they are rare. Any seller who can’t get to 99.5% is probably doing something wrong.
YMMV