@vikram333...
Nice to know you too, the pleasure is mine.
few more points:
1. I agree that sellers should keep inventory of the products listed for sale on ebay, but this is India, so we tend to tap all avenues to make money. Most of the sellers do not have the complete inventory with them but depend on someone nearby for sourcing and in event of a sale it can lead to problems as you have rightly described. Sellers of laptop and notebooks will have to depend on regional distributor for a particular model and that can lead to delays. In any case the buyer has to kept in the loop at all times.
2. Ebay have given the sellers a lead time of 7 days to ship the product to the buyer. Sellers on ebay including myself give an estimate to the buyer that in how many days we will ship and it depends on the size of the business, inventory position and the business given to courier cos(private or speedpost). Many small sellers usually club a few items and then send (or go to the post office for speedpost) but usually 90% sellers ship with 2-4 days max. In any case the seller cannot ship after 8 days because on 7th night at 00:00 hrs the ebay system will auto initiate a refund to the buyer.
3. Yes you are absolutely right the seller cannot be and should not be rude at all under any circumstances, there's are no 2 ways about it.
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