Never arrives... never sent... Seems to be on the increase

[fdxrate]

I am a long time regular ebay buyer, it's great, most sellers are great, but..

In the last few years this scenario seems to be happening more often.

You order an item and it may or may not have any tracking and it usually has a very long delivery time quoted. If it does have tracking it may only track the item leaving the country of origin and no further so pretty much useless for the buyer. Now you wait and wait and eventually you realise it not going to arrive.

In these situations contacting the seller has actually resulted in these 'happy, helpful, friendly' responses:

1. "Please be patient it will arrive. Can you please wait another 2 weeks?"
   My feeling is that this is a delaying tactic so that the refund and feedback period expires. You must request a refund immediately.
   
   
2. "Sorry to hear that, I can refund immediately. Please give me Positive Feedback."
   Clearly the seller never sent the item in the first place and IMHO there are a percentage of buyers who never follow up making this a lucrative tactic. Some of these sellers have high Positive feedback ratings because they will do anything to persuade you to not give negative feedback.
   
   
3. "It must be lost, I will send a replacement which will arrive very quickly. Please leave me positive feedback"
   Sure, sure, just give me a refund thank you.
   
   
4. "I just checked the warehouse and apologies, your order was not sent. I can send it out today for you... etc..."
   This one is a blatant scam as the original order was confirmed as sent by email with 'tracking'! Obviously never sent, I requested a refund asap.

All of these orders and others like it were never ever received, that is, the original orders that were refunded back to me did not arrive at a later date meaning that my request for refunds were justified. The highest value order that fell into this category was $60.

[jellybirddesigns]

Very typical of Chinese sellers who know that Australians tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and they therefore take advantage of our trusting natures.

All I can say is for buyers to seek out good Australian sellers and put your $$$ into our economy, not theirs.

[springyzone]

You're absolutetely right in that those do sound like delaying tactics and a lot of newbies to ebay do get caught out and wait and wait till the time to make an ebay claim or leave feedback has passed.

I suppose the trouble is some sellers could be genuine. I think in #2 example, if a seller refunds immediately after being told of a problem, then I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt or at least just not give any feedback at all either way.

I've been on ebay quite a while too but I have not struck any of your problems. I do buy very occasionally from China but not lately. All my sellers in the last year or so have been located in Australia, I think. It definitely makes a difference and best of all, you don't endure that 'very long waiting time'.

If you do see a supposed aussie seller with an unusually distant delivery estimate, you can bet your bottom dollar there is probably something suss there, either drop shipping or the item & seller are not really located here at all.

Try to buy from Australia if you can, much smoother experience and easier to sort out if things do go wrong.

[fdxrate]

As a very experienced ebay buyer buying hundreds of items every year for over 15 years, I posted my experiences for the not so experienced so they can be aware of this situation, albeit it only occurs in a low percentage of instances.

I don't single out Chinese sellers as I find most ebay sellers are good including Chinese sellers; they just happen to be in the majority of ebay sellers it seems. I had two instances 5 years ago where Australian based ebay sellers deliberately did not send the item. I won't go into details here but, it was so blatant I ended up reporting it as fraudulent behaviour to ebay who then investigated. The items never arrived even after many assurances that it had been resent and promises of refunds etc... PayPal eventually refunded.

Yes, in an ideal world we would all support Australian businesses but unfortunately it's not always possible. I run an electronics automation business and 99% of items I need are only available in either the USA or China, not Australia. The US protects its IP and subsequently restricts export of some technologies, you then only have China.

Good Chinese sellers (pre Covid) can have your order on your doorstep in 2 to 3 weeks. USA orders usually arrive in 6 working days. Australian orders on average usually arrive in 6 to 7 workings days and a recent Au purchase took nearly 2 weeks to arrive. While there are many good 'prompt' aussie sellers they are unfortunately at the mercy of Aust Post, but some Au sellers could lift their game IMHO.