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Hey everyone, just curious about something after a drawn-out transaction I had recently. There's a seller on eBay who has two stores, one for items that are in stock, and another for items that he can order (it's not posted on his store, but I've read elsewhere that's the case). Some of you may know who he is, but I'm not going to drop a name.

Anyway, I placed an order with his second store on a Tuesday, and it didn't ship until the following Tuesday. My question is, are sellers allowed to list items that they don't physically have in stock?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I wanted to come here and ask before I took it to ebay customer service.

This is disallowed.

File a dispute in the resolution center if you have a problem with a seller. Do not close it, even if requested, until you have product or your money back in hand.

However, putting aside the fact you can't sell items you don't have, sellers do have a small window they are allowed to ship in. You cannot file a dispute for at least a week (and possibly longer) after you've paid; and they have a week to respond once a dispute has been filed, so technically any seller could sit on any product for 2 weeks after you order it without a problem. This is what DSR's are made to address, if there isn't a good reason for the delay.

Just keep in mind that you can't prove it (since all you have is rumors and suspicion), and the seller can just say "sorry, I couldn't make it to the post office right away, but here's the tracking showing I shipped it". You can leave a low rating for shipping speed, but in the end you did get the item you bought and within a reasonable amount of time so your chances of getting anything in a dispute are pretty low.

So, unless the item fails to arrive as promised I'd just drop the whole thing and not buy from them again.

Well, the in-stock store takes "24 hours" to ship, while the other takes 3-4 days (generally the time it takes to get product from a distributor).

I thought about dropping it, but I just think it's bad business on his part. He's also not too great on communication, he didn't reply to a simple question about a listing for four days, and took a week and a half for one of my friends (found out about that after I bought stuff).

I don't think not shipping product for 3-4 days is all that bad, really. I mean, it's not awesome, but I wouldn't consider it unacceptable either... Amazon Prime is ruining you kids

There are plenty of people offering a service, such as painting a wargame unit, which by definition cannot be stocked in advance.

I could be persuaded that the offer to order an item when ordered by the customer is merely an extension of this principle.

I don't know how eBay actually deals with these situations, if at all.

baritowned wrote:
Well, the in-stock store takes "24 hours" to ship, while the other takes 3-4 days (generally the time it takes to get product from a distributor).

So what are you complaining about then? Your purchase took four business days (the processing time stated does not count weekends) to ship, which is within the range that the seller promised. So either you knew what you were getting into before you made the purchase and have no right to complain, or you didn't bother to read the shipping information and it's entirely your fault that you had to wait.

I thought about dropping it, but I just think it's bad business on his part. He's also not too great on communication, he didn't reply to a simple question about a listing for four days, and took a week and a half for one of my friends (found out about that after I bought stuff).

Being slow to communicate is not something you can file a dispute over. Your friend might have grounds for "slow shipping" feedback, but not a dispute. Learn your lesson and just don't buy from this person again.

I didnt even say I was going to open a dispute. I got my product, no need for a Paypal dispute. I was going to contact eBay, and inform them that it was how he was running his store. I sold on eBay for a short time, and I never posted a product without actually having it in hand.

But as Ouze said, listing a product on eBay and not actually having it in stock is disallowed.