Negative or Neutral??

themull1

I would give a positive if the item was nice, and mark down on stars. I once contacted a seller in America to ask where my item was, and he said he was sorry but his daughter had just been killed in a car crash, but he would get my item sent out immediately. That has always stuck in my mind, so i don't give negatives/neutrals for slow postage.

kev225

So the seller ignored two messages and took 11 days (7 working) to despatch.

I'd neg.

If you want justify the neg, send them another message:
'Just letting you know your late despatch and lack of communication caused me extra hassle, something you might want to bear in mind for future transactions.'

Then when they still don't apologise (since they already ignored you twice) you can neg them without guilt.

Crowqueen

To be honest, I think I can distinguish between genuine and non-genuine claims like this - but I need to see the original email etc (the last post by Mull sounds glib but maybe it wasn't like that at the time), I can't judge just from someone else's paraphrasing of it.

The time this happened to me the item was a month late - and the seller put a polite note in the item package sincerely apologising for the delay but that her mother had died. She was a fellow forum poster and I noticed she had disappeared. I wouldn't have marked her down (it was long before DSRs came in), but the tenor of how she let her buyers know was such that I had no reason to doubt her.

An email saying 'hey my daughter just died will post your item tomorrow' is different to one which apologises sincerely for a delay and asks for understanding and patience while everything gets sorted out. I've no idea how I'd be affected if a close loved one died, but I think I would make a sincere apology for keeping people in the dark - once when I was ill for a week or two and left a backlog of eBay items I wrote very apologetic emails to everyone who had bought and cleared it ASAP. Everyone was very understanding, but obviously I understood at the time some people might think it was an excuse and acted accordingly. There was one item I overlooked and I got a neg for it - fair dos, my fault entirely.

What clinches it for me is this: I would think anyone would lie about a grandparent, but a daughter is not something to lie about. I have lost three grandparents and feel they are at peace; I am glad my remaining grandmother is still alive but accept the possibility she might die. My mother used a lie about an uncle's funeral to go back to England for an interview once while working in Ireland - causing me a bit of an issue while I was living with her and she failed to come home at all one evening (I was panic-stricken, particularly when I knew she has no living uncles at all and it was a screen for something else). If I lost parents, my boyfriend or a (hypothetical) child, I'd be devastated.

A seller who holds someone's money needs to have regard for their customers even in difficult times. They will probably also shut up shop in order to focus on the problem. I have more respect for people who simply say 'OMG forgot to post this, will do so ASAP' than those who make up crass lies about something like death.