@crammondmusic wrote:
Sellers always blame shipping, or Australia Post, yet I can order an item 2 weeks ago from Hong Kong and get it in 10 days, so mail is clearly not being held up at this end.
......
1) They have altered my contract with the seller without notifying me and without my permission.
Why can sellers offer you a small percentage of the purchase price as a refund when they screw up and send the wrong item or wrong size?
I can understand some of your frustrations, but (as has already been mentioned), the ETA doesn't (or at least shouldn't) change once payment is made - it will continually update if you look at the original listing, because that only shows you the ETA if you buy it there and then, but the date in your order details (via purchase history) should remain the same, but I've left the above quotes there as they're the main things I wanted to respond to...
Sellers "blame" the postal system because the postal system is more often the reason for fluctuating transit and delivery times. There is more than one service available from countries like China, and not all sellers will use the faster methods. Some will actually ship all orders via Singapore post for even cheaper rates, and that can take up to 8 weeks from postage (in other words, two packages physically shipped on the same day via different methods, can arrive weeks apart. Sometimes even if they were shipped by the same method).
It's the same thing when I ship internationally - I have 3 options via Australia Post; economy, standard and express. If I want to provide my customers with an even cheaper rate than an economy parcel, I could ship via a company like Skippy Post instead, and add up to 3 weeks to the delivery time in the process (they, too, send off shipments via Singapore Post). Add to that varying processing times in customs, and eBay's ETA is little more than a rough guideline, often not even based in reality.
It definitely isn't a contract term, so even if the ETA has changed, it's not an alteration of the sale contract. The seller doesn't put the ETAs on listings, eBay do, so it's as much a part of a contract with the seller as any other kind of slogan eBay take upon themselves to slap on to a listing. (i.e. none).
Re: sellers offering a small percentage of the item as a refund - ideally that would be one of several options to resolve the issue. Basically it's an offer to keep the item you did get at a discounted price, sometimes that's the most workable and efficient option, depending on how much use the received item has to the buyer I suppose - there's absolutely nothing that can (or should) stop a seller from providing that as an option, but the most important thing is that it shouldn't be the only option they're prepared to provide, and it doesn't have to be accepted.
long wait.
