product broke, it has 12 mth warranty, contacted seller but he is not replying

[smillarbitworks]

What can I do?  Does Ebay hold sellers accountable at all?  I have emailed twice now and still waiting for a reply after a couple of months (sellers seem to be very happy to communicate prior to a sale or before feedback is placed, but not now!).  What action can I take please?  Does eBay allow crooks to continue to trade without consequence?  Any help appreciated!

Kind Regards

Stu

[a_beautiful_room]

Firstly ebay is just an advertising medium just like the newspaper. They aren't a company who cares about buyers or sellers particularly, they just supply you the mechanism to buy and sell. If you bought something through the classifieds, would you expect The Age or the Trading post to be accountable? ... Clearly not.

The reason many items are cheaper on ebay is that despite sellers promises, unless they are a registered business (unlikely seeing as you are being ignored) there is no enforcable warranty. So recognize that when you buy, you take the risk that if an item gives up after a few months you have no recourse. For this reason, many buyers restrict buying on ebay to things that don't require a warranty and go to a proper shop when you are buying something like a lawnmower, a phone, an appliance that may need attention at a later date.

And just BTW it seems ludicrous to expect a warranty when the seller will have no idea about how you have treated the item. If you bought a lawnmower from Bunnings and dropped it off the back of your ute, you'd have to take it back to Bunnings and they would see that it had been damaged and the warranty would not be enforceable. An online seller doesn't have the luxury of inspecting the goods to make a determination in this way .. for this reason in my mind, anyone offering a warranty should probably be avoided or taken with a grain of salt.

So sorry to tell you this, a bit of a bitter lesson.