China seller is being too good.

[modestbods]

LOL I thought I might share this with you regulars here, just for a change of pace.

 We so often read doom & gloom tales of woe related to items not received from China sellers and the sellers stalling to put buyers out of time, or not refunding voluntarily etc etc... 

 At the moment I've got an overdue delivery for an order consisting of six tems from one of the China seller's I've been buying jewellery from over the last few months. I've bought from them a dozen or so times before now and they've been very good & everything arrived as promised. One item (a fashion/costume ring) arrived with a stone missing, I informed the seller (attaching a couple of pics) and they responded within an hour aplogizing profusely and had already issued me a refund.

 The current overdue delivery is now at day 43. I had contacted the seller a couple of days ago to let them know it hadn't yet arrived. It was paid for on 10/10. They responded and asked for me to confirm that I had indeed received another item from them I had left feedback for, that had been paid for on 14/10 and thus posted after the other order (and arrived after just 2 weeks). I confirmed this, they replied telling me they weren't sure what had gone wrong as the earlier order was posted before the 14/10 item. They messaged me yesterday asking if I minded waiting another week to see if it might still arrive & if it didn't they would either resend it or refund it depending what I preferred, they also said if I didn't wish to wait they'd refund me within 24 hours.

 I replied last night telling them I was happy to wait a week or even two weeks if necessary, but just to cover myself I would open a Paypal dispute which would thus give us another 20 more days to allow the order to arrive. I then opened the dispute and reiterated the same in the message to the seller via the dispute.

 The seller sent me a message today "it's okay we'll refund you within 24hrs". I messaged back telling them it's okay as I'm happy to wait another week or two, so they should wait and refund me at that time if the order still hasn't arrived by then.

It's nice to find a good seller, especially a China seller, that want's to refund first and ask questions later.

Now before you all tell me I should just let them refund me now, and pay them again if/when the order arrives, yes I know & agree that would usually be the way to go, but I have a good reason for wanting to earn the trust of this seller via my ensuring they don't in any way think I might be making a bogus INR claim. It's an opportunity for me to build goodwill with them.

In the new year I want to ask them if they can supply a couple of their items in bulk and including larger sizes (I'm not suggesting a deal outside eBay, I'd be asking for them to list it at a pre-agreed time as a BIN). I've been buying the items (rings) via their 99c USD start auctions between 99c & $1.90 each @ an average of about $1.30 USD each. But they only ever offer US sizes 7 & 8. I want to ask them if they will sell them in bulk lots of x50, or x100, and also with larger sizes included. I'd happily pay $1.50USD which is a little above the avg I've been paying if it means I can get a consistent supply & especially if larger sizes can also be suplied.

Anyways, I just thought I'd share this as a change from the usual china seller horror stories.we see on these boards. 

[modestbods]

LOL I just got a message back from them. By the looks of it I think they may have fallen off their computer chair when they read my last merssage.

seller: "dear
you want to wait 20 days more?"

my reply just now: "If you are sure you posted them then I am happy to wait for another 18 days, as I'd much rather have the rings than a refund & they might just be delayed somewhere along the way. I buy a lot of jewellery from China and I know sometimes things take a long time to arrive.

I like your product & I like doing business with you, so I'm happy to wait a bit longer if that helps you.

Kind regards,"

(I'm such a brown-noser when I want to be) 

[maranock]

I might be another with extraordinary good luck with Chinese sellers but I have had similar experiences to yours, in fact I cannot recall when I have bought from a 'bad' Chinese seller. They seem to be always polite and are quick to refund or replace when something goes wrong, not that that happens very often.

The only sellers I have had problems with have been Americans (only a couple of course, not all) who can never believe if something takes longer than a couple of weeks to arrive that the buyer is not trying to rip them off, and are pretty rude too.

I think people tend to be too quick to paint all Chinese sellers as fraudsters waiting for an opportunity.

[modestbods]

As you would know, it usually turns out to be the case that with most of the China seller horror stories we see on here that the buyer had bought from a seller with terrible feedback.

If you look for sellers with good feedback and good responses when problems arise you are usually onto a good thing. Especially so when you consider many buyers are often prejudiced against & overly critical/suspicious of China sellers merely because they are China sellers, so when they still have very good feedback in spite of that prejudice it's for a reason.

 It really annoys me though that eBay no longer show the dates for when feedback is given. It used to make it easy to dismiss many INR related negative feedbacks left for a seller by checking the date of feedback vs the pirchase date. So very often the buyer turned out to be completely unreasonable as regards delivery times, and left negs within a week of purchase for INR despite the listing stating an estimate of 25-35 days for delivery. Now it's virtually impossible to tell if the neg is due to a genuine INR or due to a moronic buyer.

Heard back from the seller:

dear
i am sure i have send you after you paid
thank you for your understanding.and have a nice day.keep in touch.

Operation 'goodwill' is progressing nicely. 

[ajarnjenny]

Mmmmm..................I am not sure that I would have opened an INR on them if I wanted to do more business with them in the future. Especially as you have dealt with them before and had no problems. Things are delayed in the post and occasionally go missing. That seller who has been so good with you, will now get an unremoveable defect because of that case that you have opened.

Nothing wrong with wanting your money back, but maybe not the best idea if you want to continue buying from them.

[modestbods]

Is it an unremovable defect if the matter is resolved amicably between myself & the seller & I close the dispute without escalating it? If so, I hadn't realized that. It's my understanding they would receive a defect for a voluntary refund anyway though.

I doubt they are too worried about it either way as they are a large volume seller and a defect is unlikey to cause them any great issue..

 I don't trust the seller unconditionally (as they aren't pure as the driven snow), but yes I would have been willing to trust the seller to refund these items without my opening a dispute given the low value involved. But I wanted them to know that I'm well aware of time limits & the processes to protect myself before we might start dealing with more significant $$s.

[i-love-my-sheep]

I have a few Chinese sellers that I regularly buy mineral specimens from. I have never had a problem. A few weeks ago I noticed something hadn't arrived and it was past the 45 day cut off. I sent them a message and told them they package didn't arrive. They asked if I could wait one more week as the item was being sent from Hong Kong and there had been some unrest there, which was causing delays with the mail..

A week later I sent another message saying the item still hadn't arrived. I received an immediate refund. I didn't even ask for a refund, the message was originally a courtest message just to let them know what was going on.

I don't know if I'm just lucky or not, but I've really not had any issues that I could take exception to. Most have 99.9% or 100% feedback. Maybe the difference is, I don't buy clothes or electronics.

[aps1080]

I have been waiting quite a while for a couple of things from China, now over 35 days (October purchase).

Have had messages back and forth and they said would refund and not to open a dispute. I am wondering

if they are trying to take me outside any time limit ??????

Re the "time limits" and opening a dispute to give yourself protection more time (repeating what others have said), in a quick summary, when should you do this for items paid by PayPal or using Ebays new MBG Protection.

Thanks

[harley_babes_hoard]

you have 45 days to lodge an item not receive dispute do not go past day 43 then open the dispute regardless of what the seller says. Once you lodge the dispute you have a further 20 days to escalate it to a claim. again don't go over that.

[cq_tech]

As Harley says, you should open a Paypal dispute at around day 43 regardless of what your seller says, then explain to them that your are simply protecting your interests, but won't be escalating the dispute to a full claim unless you have no other option.

That gives your seller almost a full 20 days to either resolve the problem or to issue you a refund, and that way you won't have forfeited your buyer protection in case your seller turns out to be dodgy, although most aren't, despite what you may read here.