An eBay Seller Offers an Excuse...

So, I received this email this morning...

I am very busy with my current job. I try to get things out, but I am not always sucessful. I do get people there items. Some times i'm late. I was sent a suggestion: to mention that I only ship out once a week in my listings. I get in every night at about 11pm, and get to work on my projects at about 9am. I am working 7 days per week during the christmas rush. I sell stuff all of the time and can not get around to the packing and shipping, sometimes, because I'm just to tired. But I did get your item out 2 days ago. I am looking at my mail for the first time this morning at 2:33 am.

This was in response to an auction I'd won of theirs on the 10th (11 days ago), which I paid for within minutes after auction close. I'd emailed them four days ago asking if it had been shipped yet, and had no response, and then two days ago I contacted them again. If I hadn't heard from them this morning, I was going to start filing a complaint with eBay.

As you can see, they are just full of excuses... but you know what? I have no sympathy for them. If you work a job that experiences a Christmas rush, and may be working 7 days a week, then maybe you shouldn't be selling on eBay during that time of year. Especially if you can't be bothered to even check your eBay messages for 10 days.

And I think saying that you ship one day a week is completely bogus, unless you say which day of the week you ship (and make sure your listings close no more than two days prior to that). eBay allows you to file a complaint with a seller after 10 days of auction close, and if a seller waits 7 days to ship something, and uses a delivery method that takes more than 3 days... well, you can imagine that seller could get lots of complaints filed against them.

Oh, yes, and although they said they shipped it out two days ago, and gave me a tracking number (which the USPS website says there's no record of), that's still 9 days after the auction closed... and given that I paid for Priority Mail shipping, I really should be receiving it today (or tomorrow at the latest).

One final thing: They hadn't received any negative feedback in the last two weeks. Although there was one feedback from the end of November complaining about their horrible customer service. I thought given this seller's rating that they should be reliable, but let this be a warning to all of us: No matter how good someone's rating is, always check their recent feedback before bidding.

Speaking of their recent feedback, I also noticed that not all their buyers had to wait to long for them to ship... there were a few people whose purchases were made after mine, but already received their stuff!

Jon