eBay Dispute

[HeatherH]

Not sure if I posted this in the correct forum, but here goes.
So my DH won an auction on eBay and sent out payment (a cashier's check per auction terms) on April 1st. It is now April 20th and I have not heard a single peep from the seller.

I sent numerous e-mails asking if payment had been received and/or if the item had shipped. I got no response whatsoever. So then I requested the seller's info from eBay. I called the listed phone number and it said 'unable to complete the call at this time'. (WTF?) I tried from different phones and different times in the day...didn't matter, still did not get through.

So I have opened a dispute on eBay and the seller has 10 days to respond. The whole thing seems very fishy. (BTW, I told DH to never bid on anything that did not take Paypal in the future.) So I am wondering if anyone has dealt with this sort of thing before. And what happens after the 10 days? It has been 5 days since I opened the dispute.

[udsweetpea]

I believe the seller has 30 days to ship the item, but I could be wrong.

[Ribbit]

Oooh...I don't pay with cashier's checks either, for exactly this reason. And unfortunately, although you can open a dispute through ebay anytime between 10-60 days after the sale, there is nothing ebay can do to make a scammer send your money back. At the very best, they will simply close the seller's account if there is enough evidence of fraud.

What is their feedback score? Do they have very many sales? Or any negative feedback? This can help you gage if the seller has a valued account (where they will care if you threaten negative feedback, etc.), or if it's a throwaway, quickie account. Mostly, I'd say just keep your fingers crossed that they are just really slow shippers, or that something happened to delay them from shipping or contacting you. Sorry you have to deal with this!!

[HeatherH]

The seller has been a member since 2004 with 76 transactions and only 1 negative in that 4-yr. period (which had something to do with him being the buyer, not the seller). This person has plenty of selling feedback, not just buying feedback so I thought it would turn out alright. DH went to his bank where he got the cashier's check and found out that it hasn't even been cashed yet! He said, "what if the guy died or something??" I'm wondering if he should maybe try to cancel the cashier's check. :confused:
There are 3 days left in the dispute and I'm pretty sure the seller is not going to respond. Bleh!

[dancn226]

Heather, this same thing happened with my DH. He did use Paypal, so we were able to do a dispute, we had all the information. However, paypal would NOT pay us back because they said that we needed to handel it with the seller. Where here is the part that makes me mad, EBay sent my DH an email saying this guys account was cancelled due to fradulent activity. Its like what the h@ll. I mena come on Paypal, Ebay cancelled this guys account. I wonder if I cna do a dispute it through Ebay! This was a lot of $ so it makes me very angry. We sent the stuff back because it was used, when he told us it would be new. He sent my DH and email saying that he would send a new one. Well my DH sent it back wtih tracking and everything, and he recieved it, but we have yet to get a new one or anything! This was three months ago! I told Dh to stay AWAY from Ebay. If they can cancel someones account and not help us get our $ back, it makes me so angry!!!

[HeatherH]

dancn226- I'm sorry to hear about that! :(
I'm just so frustrated because I've been using eBay for 5 years now and I've never had an issue!

[isign]

I accidentally forgot to ship something once - thought I had, long story - and instead of emailing me, the buyer disputed through pay pal, and got the money back without me even issuing a refund.

In this case, I'd probably cancel the check and get the money back.