I bought a pen recently on ebay and was told today that the item is about to ship--a full 13 days after I paid for it. I've received no explanation, no apology, no indication on the selling page it would take this long to ship. My suspicion is that the seller did not have the item to sell when it was offered for sale.

Does anyone know if ebay has rules about how long a period there should be between payment and ship date? I've looked around and can't find anything. Is a request for price adjustment, or negative feedback, in order?

Any advice from seasoned ebayers (or others) gratefully accepted. And of course next time I bid I'll ask about ship dates etc.

cheers
eric

I'm hardly a seasoned ebayer, but when I bought a pen off of eBay, it took about one to two weeks for it to get from where it was, to where it was going. From the United States to Australia. It was stated-so in the auction, and I was prepared to wait.

This seems fair enough to me. If I buy from Thailand or Japan I expect the post to take a while. But this is all within the US, and it's taken the seller almost two weeks to get the pen from his house to the post office.

cheers
eric.

Within the same country, that seems pretty extreme, two weeks!! If it's overseas, I can understand, but...wow...

I have 125 transactions on e-bay and about 25-30 are me selling something. I state in my auctions I will ship the item within 7 working days of the auction and so far I have done so. I know a few sellers I have bought from state they ship on Monday's only and the worst I saw was 2 weeks but that was from over seas. I agree with shangas.

I have shipped to Italy and Spain and even though I shipped the items 3 days after the auction, it took the items 3 weeks to get there due to the way I shipped them which was US Postal International. Cheap but slow.

They do have a standard for shipping time. You are not allowed to sell items you won't have in time to ship according to their policy. I don't remember how many days that is. The best thing is to leave feedback. I buy DVDs and such and often they will not only address the problem but go beyond, in an effort to get the bad feedback removed. For a non-pro seller, certainly good to give other customers a heads-up.

I'd at least email the seller to ask why it took so long before leaving bad feedback or asking for money back.
Then again I've lost out on claiming money back from US sellers a few times due to leaving it too long to claim. I tend to take most people at face value so if they say they've had problems I will usually give them the benefit of the doubt.

I guess it would depend on the price I paid. If I had paid hundreds of dollars for something easily posted I'd expect the seller to make the effort but if it was only a $10 item I'd give them a lot more leeway.

Well, I wrote out a longish response and was punked by the server gods . . . I guess that's fate voting in favor of brevity.

Suffice to say . . . I had a similar situation with ink. Ended up even filing a dispute with Paypal. The package of ink arrived on my doorstep a few days before the dispute progressed to the point where I would have requested my money back. Throughout it all I got no communications from the seller.

This was especially frustrating since the seller was located in a nearby suburb . . . probably a 15 minute drive away.

I ended up filing a 'Neutral' feedback, with a note indicating very slow shipping and zero commications. Since I did recieve the items I paid for, I could not justify a 'Negative' to myself. Perhaps I was too easy on them . . .

I think a neutral feedback is appropriate in the case of slow shipping and poor communication.

I generally try to get things out next business day, but with my recent ink bonanza, I was slower at sending those out, in part because I simply couldn't get near the post office for the next couple of days (had I thought about it, I'd have waited until after tax season was over, y'know?). In fact, I couldn't even leave for work on my usual route because of the way they'd routed the street to handle the post office traffic and construction.

If I pay immediately after the auction I expect the item to be shipped within three days. If it is not it will be reflected in my feedback.

I think that feedback is mostly best avoided. I recently left positive feedback for a seller, but commented on his slow feedback despite my prompt payment and I got a negative for my troubles and a load of abusive emails suggesting that I had some sort of mental disorder as well as lies about what actually happened. This is the second time that I have had a neg left against my account that was uncalled for, but eBay don't make them easy to have removed. Now I leave feedback for sellers that have left feedback for me. I no longer sell on eBay.

My advice: don't leave feedback. If you have the item that you paid for put it down to experience.

I agree that sellers leaving retaliatory negative feedback is unacceptable. I'm glad eBay decided to strip them of that right (I'm not sure as of when, but the last newsletter I received from eBay indicated that sellers would no longer be allowed to leave feedback).

I can understand if it's an international or cross border transaction. Two weeks within the USA is a little extreme unless the pen is shipping from the middle of nowhere.

Give them one more week then make inquiries.

Bill

Retaliatory feedback was never permissible, but as of some point in the future, sellers won't be able to leave neutral or negative feedback for buyers. I disagree with that change. There are buyers who are crooks, and one should be able to leave meaningful feedback about that. That said, negative feedback for a buyer vs. seller being weighted differently would be acceptable.

I feel that it is unacceptable for a seller to wait for feedback from buyer before posting feedback for the transaction. I paid for an item within three minutes of end of auction. The seller sent me an item with a obvious defect which was not shown in the photo or described by the seller. I tried to get him to accept a return. He said he would take the item back if I paid his postage, the return postage,and all Ebay and Paypal charges. I did not return the item and left negative feedback explaining the problem. He than left negative feedback for me.

It should be accepted that if a seller receives payment promptly they should leave feedback for that part of the transaction promptly. Any eBay transaction is a two part process, buying the goods and selling the goods. As a buyer I wont be held to ransom for good feedback on the potential threat that I will be left negative feedback. This is why only sellers that leave feedback on me get feedback in return. In reality as a buyer only on ebay it matters not one jot if I have a string of negative feedback as sellers don't tend to read the feedback of their buyers before agreeing to sell them goods.

I have only left a negative on two occasions. Once where the goods had still not been received after 3 weeks and there was no response from the seller. The next time was when I paid premium postage rates and the package was sent normal post with insufficient postage, for which I had to pay a fine at the Post Office to be able to pick up the goods. I offered the seller the chance to refund the fine and the excess postage that I paid. They refused. I left a neg and they retaliated with a neg.

If you paid by personal check, I can understand the seller waiting until the check clears, but if by Paypal or Money Order it should have shipped more quickly or you should have been advised of the delay.

Right--I should have mentioned I paid by Paypal.

Thanks to all for the information--FPN members are nothing if not fair-minded. I had a strong inclination towards negative feedback but now I'll probably send neutral, depending on when the pen actually ships.

I believe it's in May that sellers will lose the ability to post feedback on buyers--I don't know if that will apply to sales that have already occurred when this happens.

I've had very good experiences with Ebay over the years, but now things would appear to have changed, and I'll be a good deal more circumspect from now on. Shame.

cheers
eric.

The buying of the goods doesn't end until the buyer has received the goods. How the buyer handles any issue is at least as important as how the seller does.

It's probably because I have no axe to grind with sellers and I am a more than fair person. As far as I am concerned a prompt payment deserves prompt feedback. I always drop a line to sellers to advise them that the goods have arrived and have been lucky to have only received faulty goods once, a Sheaffer Touchdown with a cracked barrel. I didn't get a response from the seller so I gave up on that one. If the goods are OK and shipping and feedback was fast I tend to leave effusive feedback. I want that seller to do well.

I assume that the new policy of sellers not being able to leave feedback on buyers will also come to eBay UK. It is one of the best things that eBay has done for us buyers. No longer will we be blackmailed into leaving good feedback where it was not deserved. No longer will we receive retaliatory negatives. eBay has done this for a reason and I am sure that reason is the amount of complaints from unfairly treated buyers. Sellers only have themselves to blame.

If the item had been not correctly described and the problem was not visible at the picture (e.g. missing clutch ring) I don't leave feedback. On the other hand the missing clutch ring on a pen less than 10 Euros was not worth any further trouble so I let it be.

If it is a bigger problem (not in working order although described as "working order") I contact the seller. So far this worked out o.k.


An item arriving within a week is very nice. Especially if payed via paypal. Anything up to 2 weeks is acceptable because parcel services tend to be slower than pens sent as a letter.

If the item did not arrive within 2 weeks I ask the seller about the shipment.

Yea...what she said.
SOP for me as a buyer is to contact the seller to let them know that I just won an item of theirs. That way if they return an e-mail quickly(i.e.,1 or 2 days)I know that communication won't or shouldn't be a problem. If it takes longer to get an e-mail
just for the payment info,I can see there will be problems ahead. I also ask when they can send the item,since I usually pay
by Paypal. I usually try to give them at least a week if they haven't sent an e-mail about when they will be sending out the item.
If I still haven't heard from them by then,I send them an e-mail(read:polite nastygram) letting them know that I will be sending
out negative feedback. The key to getting good feedback as a seller is communication.

John

I'm totally with you on that. So long as the buyer fulfills his obligations he should get positive feedback. I am surprised that this point isn't brought up too often.

Depends upon what "permissible" means. It might have been prohibited, but nearly impossible to prove. One of those things that is on the books, so eBay can say "We don't allow that"; however, if asked "How do you prevent it or punish it if someone does it?" eBay would reply with a blank stare, because there is no provision for prevention or enforcement. That is why eBay stopped allowing sellers to leave feedback; because retaliatory feedback was rampant, even if not permissible. People do things without permission every day, all day long.

Donnie

I recently won a parker 51 on ebay. I was concerned about how long it would take to ship so I went to one of the forums and they said a person has 30 days to ship then you should lodge a complaint. So... as unfair as it seems I guess if we play in their game we go by their rules. Hope you see your pen soon. Caz

That sounds a bit extreme to me. My experience on eBay has been for the most part things shipped the same day, or the next business day and were delivered withing two weeks (and that includes items from Europe and Asia).

Only twice did it take longer.

In one case the seller emailed me right away and informed me my winning bid came in after he had shut down for vacation. He was a part timer taking his family on a trip and said so up front in our communications. Fair enough, and he took care of it upon his return on the exact day he promised.

The other was similar to your situation. I did instant payment and badgered him for two weeks with little or no response. He did reply once with an excuse and a promise to take care of it right away. I eventually had to file a Paypal claim against him to get him moving and get my item.