Dilemma I'm currently in.

[Sudo]

Eleven days ago (March 12th), I won and paid for an auction (Dead Rising for 360) from a seller who has 730k feedback. I figured this was a no-brainer, and that it'd be a smooth transaction. Turns out I was wrong. The game has still not shipped, despite the e-mail I received the same day I paid saying that they usually ship within two business days. I've checked my order status every day, and it's still being processed, even though they received my payment and left feedback for me.

I've tried e-mailing them to see what the deal is, only to be met with automated responses. I've also tried calling their customer service number, but it seems no one is ever there because it just says "there is no one available to take your call" after putting you on hold for five minutes. I left messages, but haven't been called back. I'm most likely going to call my bank tomorrow and see if I can get the charge dropped, as I'm sick of waiting and there's no indication that they intend to ship my game anytime soon. I feel I've made every reasonable effort to resolve the situation; what would you do?

[ryborg]

Ebay says to wait two full weeks before acting on a non-acting seller, which I feel is a reasonable amount of time. How did you pay? Perhaps opening a Paypal dispute or even an ebay Item Not Received dispute will get their attention. If you paid with a check, most places will wait for it to fully clear before they will ship.

This is part of the problem in dealing with big-time, 100k+ feedback sellers. If there's ever a problem, they lack the customer service skills and don't seem to care about individual problems.

[Sudo]

I paid using my debit card. I'll take your advice and wait the three more days before I take action, though it's extremely frustrating when someone with 10 feedback gets a game to me in two days at a cheaper shipping rate than someone with 730k feedback who takes two weeks.

[Sudo]

I received an e-mail from the seller saying that they're "sorry that they're unable to fulfill my order" and will be issuing me a refund within 5 business days. This pisses me off. Why would you list something for sale when you obviously don't have it in stock, only to jerk someone around for almost two weeks? I left negative feedback, hopefully I'll get my refund sooner rather than later so I can just buy the game elsewhere with the money.

[jb143]

That's happened to me before with books. I ordered quite a few to keep combined shipping costs low and they replied that 5 of the books were "on backorder" Then eventually, one of the books I got the responce "I'm sorry, one of our test auctions accidentally made it to an official listing blah blah blah"

This happens a lot with large quantity sellers. They drop ship items that they don't have in stock or even pay for untill you place an order. A seven day auction is plenty of time for their supplier to go out of stock.

Unfortunatly there's not much ebay does about this as long as they refund your money. To bad they can't refund your time as well.

[nebrazca78]

Huge sellers also don't seem to care about individuals. They do try to keep their feedback above 98% but that's about it. When you sell 500 items a day, one or two negative feedbacks here and there is completely inconsequential. They will not change the sellers feedback rating and your remarks will be buried under other feedback within a day.

I only have 2000+ FB and one negative won't even change MY feedback percentage. I think two negatives would only drop me .1%.

Because of this I tend to shy away from enormous sellers unless they have 99.5% FB or better. I've been screwed over by the big guys more than anyone else, including people with sub-98% FB.

[Cornelius]

I agree. I prefer to buy from people in the 10-1000 range, as I figure they are more like me... just selling some extra stuff they have around or doing it as a hobby. Less volume means less likely to lose track of stuff.