quick ebay question

Just wondering if any of you had this happen to you and what did you do.
I won an auction that luckily didn't include the shipping fees.( March 30th) I asked for invoice from seller to complete the sale. Didn't hear a thing from the seller. I emailed him three more times and tried to let ebay know about it. ( who just responded with helpful tips on fraud, but no answer to my direct question)I even went so far as to contact the other winners of auctions that ended right before and just after mine ended. All of them wrote back that they too had not heard back from the seller. Some even left negitive feedback. ( I did not) I gave up on the mug and bought one elsewhere. Today 17 days later I get an invoice. My question is do I have to complete the sale, or is there a time limit allowing me to say sorry, but no thanks?

[ Edited by: tikichic 2005-10-06 07:00 ]

Yeah, 17 days is way too long, especially if you already got the mug elsewhere. Like tikichic was saying, there are standards in place that everyone is supposed to abide by.

I agree, the sale is void! Ebay is aslo no help at all. I had another seller harassing me via the "contact seller" system. When I complained, be email of course, because you can't contact a live person at ebay, they sent me back a standard form response that asked for the email with the headers. This was idiotic because the email came from ebay through their "contact" system. I sent it, even forwarded the entire email to them and got the same form response, over and over again. No message I every got from ebay had any personalized information that would indicate that a real person was reading and responding to MY situation. I use ebay every day, but their customer service sucks!

There is also the "Live Help" option on their website. That gets you through to someone via a chat line situation. I found that to work better than emailing anything to eBay.

Thanks the quick answers.I know that at least one person has already left negitive feedback about two auctions that they won. Another fella emailed me today and said he just got an invoice today and he is turning down the sale too. We both feel that just sending a invoice with no explanation after 14 days as to what the heck happened, doesn't deserve our cash.
Thanks again

[ Edited by: exotica59 on 2005-04-15 11:32 ]

The seller can still leave you negative feedback for up to (I believe) 90 days! Just because you think the transaction is void doesn't mean that ebay does. If you don't mind the potential negative feedback then go ahead and ignore the invoice. I think that the only way you blow off a transaction without negative feedback is if ebay cancels the seller's account.

If you ebay for any length of time you WILL eventually get ripped off. I just consider it a part of the cost of doing business in the cyber equivalent of a third world marketplace. You have to decide if it's worth the possible negative feedback to fight the other person. Negative feedback doesn't impact the buyer as much as the seller but if you ever want to sell on ebay in the future, a negative feedback won't look so good.

On 2005-04-15 19:02, Kono wrote:
The seller can still leave you negative feedback for up to (I believe) 90 days! Just because you think the transaction is void doesn't mean that ebay does.

I've been both a seller and a buyer on ebay for the past 6 years and, you're right, a seller and a buyer has up to 90 days from the end of the auction to leave feedback.

Negative feedback doesn't seem to be the big black mark on your record that it once was. It's expected that after so many sales or buys that someone is going to leave negative feedback because you just can't please everyone all the time.

I'd suggest that you try to make contact with the seller before you consider it a voided auction. He/she could have good reason to have not contacted you. They could be in the hospital. They could have had a family emergency. You just never know.

You might want to contact ebay to get this seller's personal information which will include a phone number. It's worth a shot.

I'm happy to report that all ended well with the seller and myself. We parted on good terms. They understood my buying elsewhere after such a long wait. And they thanked me for not wanting to leave them negative feedback.I guess most everyone else left negative.They said they got the blue screen of death virus. I'm not familar with that and hope to never be. We wished each other well and hopefully that is the end of that.

I dont buy any "computer problem" excuses. How difficult is it to go to the library, internet cafe, or friends house and email all your buyers and sellers and explain what has happened?

that was my thought too. I would have done anything I could to try not to get negitive feedback. These people have not used ebay much by their feedback score, and had never been sellers before this failed attempt.They maybe just weren't thinking things through clearly at the time, who knows.
Just glad it's finally settled and everybody was happy. I even made a great new friend with one of the other buyers who nevered haerd back from this seller. He's a tiki nut too! We're going to swap some mugs, and he had not found TC yet, so I clued him in. So this whole deal wasn't a total loss.

On 2005-04-16 20:51, exotica59 wrote:
I'm happy to report that all ended well with the seller and myself. We parted on good terms. They understood my buying elsewhere after such a long wait. And they thanked me for not wanting to leave them negative feedback.I guess most everyone else left negative.They said they got the blue screen of death virus. I'm not familar with that and hope to never be. We wished each other well and hopefully that is the end of that.

Here is my blue screen of death encounter. It still hasn't been resolved. Dell's "award winning" tech support is the most laughable thing I have ever delt with. It was terrible. I still to this day have never even gotten anyone at Dell to admit that I even have the problem. They all think I don't know what I'm talking about.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=13651&forum=6

What the heck else can go wrong! Now a guy I sold some books to is trying to claim that the post office emailed him a message that due to improper packaging the contents were distroyed, and he wants his money back!He filed a claim and paypal is holding my $100! Lucky for me I always pay for the signature confirmation receipt and I have him signing for the books a whole two weeks before he claimed that the PO emailed him! I went to the post office and also got them to sign a letter stating that my transaction was compltete. The PO also would like to get their hands on that email. Of course as soon as typed all that back to the guy he dropped the claim. Some people really suck!

I have learned that the moment an ebay transaction starts to turn into a mess, I request their contact info. People will play all kinds of games when its just a name on the computer. When the other party realizes that you now have their name, address, and phone number, they quickly decide that the dont want any "real life" problems. i really thought about driving to the house of a guy who lives 90 minutes away after he lied on my feedback that I cashed his money order and did not send his items. The ebay feedback system is a joke.