I just thought I might get some input on this in case it develops the way it's looking like it will (I hope it won't, but I want to know the best approach to take if it does) - if anyone has had experience with a similar situation, advice etc very welcome.
I've been buying from a supplier well over a year, no problems (not any worth noting, anyway). They have two sites which I use, one is for smaller wholesale quantities, the other for much higher wholesale quantities - for the sake of ease. I'll refer to the smaller one as site 1, and the bigger one as site 2. In December, I made orders on both sites a couple of weeks apart - site 2 has a longer lead time, but they told me my order would ship out on the 19th of December. It did not, but before the 19th, I ran out of an item unexpectedly and made a second order on site 2, so I then had two open orders there.
Later in December, they shipped my site 1 order via DHL, and I received that no problems on the 29th. I sent an inquiry asking about my site 2 order that they said would ship on the 19th and their response was "we think you've already received it, hope you like it" 😞
I replied and said no, I have not received it, according to the order details it hasn't been sent, and mentioned the only order I had received from them is my site 1 order.
They replied with "sorry to mislead you, we can see you have 2 open orders on this site now - we'll send the first one tomorrow, and the other one the day after".
Now, I've received a shipping notification for the first of the site 2 orders, only they've used the DHL tracking number that was for the site 1 order. (Shipping method I selected for this order was in fact USPS).
If I need to dispute the site 2 order, they will have tracking information to show they sent me something that's definitely been received, so I know I will need to talk to PayPal and discuss options and make sure I can show that if they supply information from another order, PayPal will actually believe me. 
Has anyone experienced similar, and if so, how did you approach the dispute or PayPal?
@digital*ghost wrote:that would mean they almost definitely knew what they were doing when they provided me that tracking number for the new order,
Then again, maybe they didn't. 
I've just received a new reply, which related solely to site 2, order 2, so while I was there I scanned back through all the messages.
It seems site 1's order reference number differs by site 2 order 1's number by 2 digits (in the middle, so they have the same prefix and suffix, as it were), and I realised they in fact referred to site 1's number in their last message regarding postage and tracking.
I have no idea what this means, but I've sent a new message detailing exactly what my enquiry is for in the simplest terms possible, making sure to point out the reference numbers for each order and which one my enquiry relates to... so, yeah. Hopefully this will help sort things out.
Just in case anyone was curious..
After the message referred to above, I received two more "we'll send it tomorrow" messages, received order 2 Friday last week, then got "we'll send it next week" message, and finally earlier this week, received "due to UPS price increases, we've changed the shipping method to DHL and will send it tomorrow" message.
O_O
I collated as much info as I could relating to the orders and tracking numbers, just in case, but took no action as I would much prefer to resolve with the seller and continue to deal with them. I now have a new shipping notification / tracking number, which shows that it was picked up by DHL today and is addressed to me, which is a good sign. (Not counting my chickens, as I obviously have to ensure the order is correct and complete, but at least I now have some [virtual] eggs.... 
).
Some eggs take longer to hatch than others, and patience is always required.
It sounds like the moral of the story is to always get a tracking number for each order as you make it, because that would prevent them from being able to get away with using the tracking number from one order on another one. Unless I missed something, which is entirely possible...
@englishrosegardens wrote:Some eggs take longer to hatch than others, and patience is always required.
It sounds like the moral of the story is to always get a tracking number for each order as you make it, because that would prevent them from being able to get away with using the tracking number from one order on another one. Unless I missed something, which is entirely possible...
As long as they're not carnivorous dinosaur eggs, it should be all good. 😄
I've decided to only ever have one open order between both sites from now on, as they don't seem to have a system for differentiating orders between the sites and the messages I sent via site 2 are showing up in my message history on site 1. o_O
@dylan, thankfully with these kinds of items it's a bit hard for them to vary in quality too much - just little bits of steel.
