Greetings, having exhausted myself with trying to resolve this issue, I share it here.
I had received a payment 10 days after the unpaid item cases have been close after 25 days of pursuing the buyer for the payment.
This buyer, with the eBay id "shilparora", had bid and won 7 of my auctions item on 12/05/2010. After many days of requesting payment and sending invoices, when the buyer did not respond at all, as per the eBay suggestions I had opened an unpaid item case for all these items on 22nd December (after 17 days of trying to communicate with the buyer and waiting for the payment).
After the 4 days in which eBay communicates asking the buyer to respond and pay got over, the buyer finally wrote to me that a cheque has been deposited, saying that the cheque would take 3-4 days to clear and asking me to withdraw the case in the meanwhile. I waited for another 10 days for the payment to show up in my bank account but to no avail. The supposed cheque never showed up.
At this point, I suspected non-commitment and since the last date for me to close the unpaid items cases approached and I would lose out on final value fee credit if I don't close it within the timeframe set by eBay, I closed the cases for all 7 items on 1st of January, and moved on.
Then, after 12 days of the transactions being cancelled and the unpaid item cases being officially closed through eBay, on 13th January, the buyer ends up paying for these items out of the blue!
I called the buyer regarding this as I wanted to refund the payment, and I was assured by the buyer's family member (mother) who took the phone that the buyer would reach back to me regarding this, but it never happened, just like it has been all along even from the day of winning/buying my items.
I emailed the buyer, called the buyer, messaged the buyer, on numerous occasions, not knowing how to refund the payment that was not valid anymore.
I feel exhausted having to deal with such buyers, and I'm just not comfortable about the non-payment of this buyer up until both me (seller) as well as eBay have followed the entire procedure to resolve the issue, and then paying the amount where the sale itself has been cancelled officially through eBay itself.
The fact that this buyer didn't even try to communicate properly keeping me in the dark for so many days, and then, without consulting eBay or me about the closed unpaid item cases, goes about making the payment after days of the transactions being cancelled, there's something just not right here.
Now I just do not know what to do with this amount that has come in, and I have no energy to pursue this matter with the buyer anymore as the buyer on the other end is almost non-existent and clearly doesn't want to respond. I suspect the possibility of more problems in the future due to how the buyer has behaved till now. It's very sad that sellers encounter such energy-draining buyers at eBay.
Instead of open and honest communication from the start, there's no response and silence first, then when I opened the cases and let eBay mediate, an email telling me that the payment has been initiated, asking me to withdraw the cases. Then the payment never comes for another 10 days. Then I close the cases within the eBay deadline. After 10 more days, the buyer suddenly makes the payment, silence before it and silence again, till now.
I felt that there's something wrong with all this, and there might come more unnecessary problems my way as this payment amount is lying with me.
Kindly help me here as to what I can do regarding all this,
The item numbers in case you need them are:
170572364308
170572619566
170572671786
180593512283
180593517053
180593522562
180593806668
The buyer's id is "shilparora"
Awaiting to hear some suggestions and also hoping that the concerned eBay personnel do something about this.
