I recently had no response to my inquiries about a shipment. None. Went on for a couple of weeks, with me leaving ebay messages, emails, and voicemail messages. I finally got fed up, made it clear through ebay, email, and voicemail that I would leave negative feedback if there was no response.

No response.

So after an internal debate about the best way to deal with a non-responsive seller, I left negative feedback as my FIRST tactic (rather than filing a complaint first).

Within a few minutes, I got a response saying that the bike had been shipped, and mildly complaining about the negative feedback. Turns out she (according to her) was in the midst of a messy divorce and had limited access to her email and answering machine.

Maybe, maybe not, but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt because I did receive the bike and am otherwise happy with it so now I have to try to modify the negative. In the past, I've had almost no success with official dispute resolution processes, so am reluctant to let ebay waste my time with those routes, thus my resorting to negative feedback.

I'm still not sure what the best way to handle disputes is.