roccobike

About a month ago, I bid on a bicycle part, near vintage of course. I paid with PayPal. The part never arrived. I sent messages through ebay to the seller twice notifying him that the part had not arrived, but he chose not to communicate. Yesterday, within 30 days of the purchase, I filed a dispute.
Today, my ebay account states I have no items not received! However, my Paypal account states there is an outstanding dispute.
I did not leave negative feedback, however, the purchase has disappeared from the section on ebay that calls for me to leave feedback (strange). However, I still have access to the sale because it appears on my watch list and is still requesting feedback.
Does anyone here know what's going on? Is the filing that I originally started with ebay, but now appears with Paypal, sufficient or do I need to file again with ebay? Should I keep after Paypal or do they handle the dispute with no further prompts from me?
I'm a total newbie here because I've had very good luck with ebay until now. Any help, advice is appreciated.

sciencemonster

Email the guy one last time, tell him in 5 days you are protesting the charge on your VISA card if you don't have the part, and then do it. Paypal and eBay aren't gonna do squat for you. Their whole system is designed to waste time and see if you get tired of pursuing it and give up.

McDave

I would "Request Seller's Contact Information", then call him up. This usually wakes the seller up and even if he doesn't pick up the phone, he'll often respond within minutes by email. At least this is the approach I have to use on occasion when dealing with someone like the Sultan. YMMV

Charles Wahl

I would immediately cancel any charge on my credit card (or dispute it through them, whatever). A month is a long time for no communication and no package. If you have the charge cancelled, you're dealing more from a position of strength, rather than running from pillar to post trying to get other people to take care of it. (Of course, you have to be willing to never hear from the seller, or your purchase, again.)

FWIW, I always insist on sellers sending merchandise insured. Most times you can add $1.65 to the transaction, even if it says "not available" when seller is using USPS. And in the few cases that it's truly been unavailable, I've simply notified seller with my PayPal payment that if the item is not insured, and they don't offer me the opportunity to pay for insurance, the risk is entirely theirs: if I don't receive the item in good condition, I expect a full refund of auction price, and shipping cost. I state this gently but firmly; so far nobody has reacted negatively, and some sellers have even been prompted to email me back "sure thing."

BTW, I've never had any problems with the Sultan, and I've bought a few things from him.

Antipodes

Well I have, and I can say that I will never get anything from him again.
I won an auction for a derailleur, and after receiving no confirmation or communication of winning the auction I decided to try and contact him. Four messages/emails and almost a month later he writes back saying that he posted the item out almost two weeks prior. Okay, fine I can live with that. Another two weeks passes before the item turns up, and upon inspection of the postmark on the envelope, it showed that he didn't post when he said, but rather almost two weeks later. When I actually pull the derailleur out of the envelope, I don't like what I see. The derailleur has evident signs of wear on the inner of the cage and isn't close to being "near mint" and "showing signs of hardly any use". His photos (which everyone says are so great). This p*sses me off, so I contact him about it. Over a week later he gets back to me asking how he can make things right. I tell him to leave me good feedback, seeing as I paid and contacted him immediately upon the closing of the auction. Well, almost three months later and no feedback left.
Take that (and the other negative feedback he's received lately) as a warning...

bigtruck

As said above, Dispute the charge with your Credit Card ASAP ASAP, Ring them and say you want to do a chargeback Paypal will act faster if they know
your Credit Card company is going to charge back , Take a snapshot of the Auction and save it to your PC also, Keep as much information as you can as your Credit card company may want to see it but I doubt they will

Ex Pres 

Re: (if you're referring to) your eBay account summary page - look to the right and change it from last 30 days to something longer and you should see the item

roccobike

Thanks to all responders. I just contacted my credit card firm, they are sending me an affidavit to file a complaint to paypal. Apparently, they go after Paypal who has to go after the seller.
I'll check that 30 day thing, that sounds the reason the sale disappeared.
Now I'm debating whether or not to leave negative feedback. I'm surprised because this seller is a 99.4% postive feedback with over 700 sales. But I sent him 2 notes that the package was not received and he did not contact me to state how he shipped it.

McDave

I wouldn't leave feedback until the matter has been resolved to your satisfaction.

Blue Order

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.