eBay has quite an intricate and long-winded dispute resolution procedure. Within this email, I’ll try to break each step down for you personally, so that you can see what’s involved and how long it takes.
As an example, let’s undergo what you should do if you covered a product but didn’t receive it from your seller.
Prior to deciding to open a dispute: Provide the seller an opportunity to send the item before you get ahead of yourself and open a dispute. If you’re concerned about just how long them takes to arrive, the very first thing you should do is send a polite email to the owner saying that you haven’t received it and asking whether or not they have posted it. It’s also wise to check your own email address in eBay’s options, to ensure that the owner can reply to you. As a last resort before opening a dispute, make an attempt to call the seller around the number eBay has on their behalf. You might have to pay long-distance charges for your call, but that’s much better than dragging the auction through mediation for months.
Step 1 – You open an Item Not Received dispute: You can do this here: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?InrCreateDispute.
All that’s necessary to do is enter the item number and say that you didn’t get the item.
Step 2 – eBay contacts the seller: eBay sends the seller a message that tells them that you’ve said you didn’t receive the item. Then can then choose to tell you one of three things: that your payment hasn’t cleared yet, that an item is within the post, or that they’ll provide you with your money back. The owner may also tell eBay that they might like to send you an email.
Step 3 – You talk to the owner: You try to work out what’s happened directly with the seller, sending messages back and forward. Hopefully they’ll agree to provide you with a refund for the sake of their feedback, or your item will generate in the post during this period.
Step 4 – Closing the dispute: After Thirty days (or 10 days if the owner didn’t respond), you’ve got two options to close the dispute: either you had been satisfied or else you weren’t. If you weren’t satisfied, then you can certainly claim under eBay’s purchase protection program for up to $200.
Independent Dispute Mediation.
If you don’t want to go through eBay’s own process, and particularly if the auction was for a high-value item, then you can work with a third-party mediator. eBay recommend SquareTrade, at http://www.squaretrade.com, who provide mediation to many websites where there are clients. They will contact the seller on your behalf after which mediate as you negotiate what to do from there.
Sellers that are committed to experiencing SquareTrade’s mediation for any disputes can sign up to display the ‘SquareTrade seal’ on their own auctions. This provides their buyers $250 fraud protection, and shows that their identity has been independently verified so they really are who they are saying they may be.
When your sellers aren’t in such good standing, though, you will need to be careful to avoid as a victim of fraud. There are some scams that you especially need to be aware of – we’ll cover them within the next email.
Alvaro Medez creates interesting content on different matters such as auctions articles
