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Geomantik,
While I do think that your experience sounds very frustrating, it sounds like emilyandlily did try their best to make up for what happened to you, including bringing in a trusted 3rd party, square trade, to help to find out what could help you to resolve your problem.
I've been in the ebay world for quite some time and oftentimes what happens with powersellers is everything is an automatic process and unless you follow up with them, it's hard for a human to know what exactly is going on with your individual transaction.
If you look at the volume of sales that that store does on a daily basis just based on feedback (which is oftentimes a small percentage of the actual sales that are going on), they are pumping out hundreds of items everyday. There is bound to be error in some transactions. And oftentimes ebayers take this personally and don't look at the larger picture.
I've been both a buyer and a seller on ebay for years, and I firmly believe that ebay is about promoting both buyer and seller protection through the feedback system. You know what you're getting yourself into for the most part. Negative feedback is very damaging for any seller on ebay and is taken very seriously. Often times with powersellers, it is only when a dispute or a negative is left that management even knows that a problem has occured within a transaction. (BTW, whenever you open a paypal dispute it takes funds away from the seller, so you are often sent a payment reminder automatically, that was probably not from the seller themselves).
Just from spending 10 minutes looking at emilyandlily's feedback, I'm impressed. They are speedy in getting in touch with buyers that have left negative feedback, which means that they take their customers, especially those that have problems, very seriously. In the past year, this seller has received almost 83,000 positive feedbacks and only 74 negatives were unresolved. That's significantly less than .01 percent of the people that left feedback could not or would not resolve their problem with their transaction. Pretty impressive to me. Especially in the line of items that they sell, personal electronics are notorious for breaking on consumers, and the level of support that they provide to their customers is incredible from what I have read and seen on ebay. More often than not, consumers will blame the defectiveness of the product on the seller, especially in the world of eBay. I could go to the electronics store down the street and get a device that I want to use tonight only to find that it doesn't work. Is it the fault of the store that the item doesn't work? No. Do I expect them to take it back? Depends on the condition of sale. Same as in the ebay world. Sometimes a device just doesn't work. This could be an error that was caused by damage in shipping, an error that was caused because a system didn't support the player, or an error because the item was faulty to begin with. Many people don't understand that there is a percentage of electronics that just don't work coming straight from the manufacturer, be they brand new or refurbished. More often than not, again especially in ebay, the buyer will blame the seller for this. From all that you have said of the initial response from this store, they went above and beyond what a lot of sellers would do on ebay by offering you a replacement or a refund. Many sellers could have easily at this point just said "sorry, can't help you" or even the standard "bidder beware", but this is not good business and from every thing that you have said, not the policy of this seller. I can see your point that it did take quite a long time to receive your refund, but there are so many things that can go wrong in a returns process, that this delay does not surprise me in the least. I've gone three months waiting for a refund when an item was lost in the post. Was I upset? Of course. Did I blame the seller for this? Sometimes. Was it essentially their fault? Not really, they need to protect themselves from fraudulent buyers, and having been burned many times from both buyers and sellers, i understood this.
In the world of ebay, buyers often talk about being "bribed" to remove feedback. In my experience, I see that as more of a form of compensation. If you go to a restaurant and have a horrible experience, you often expect some type of compensation, such as having the meal comped by the manager. In ebay, there is usually only a monetary compensation available. I've both had it done to me as a buyer and done it myself as a seller. In the ebay community, it's a measure of good faith. It's letting the buyer know that you acknowledge the trouble that they've gone through. There is not a way to offer a buyer a coupon for 20% off their next purchase, so why not throw them a refund now for the trouble?
From what you've said here, I think that this seller tried their best to remedy the situation with you. Take a step back, was it really that horrible and outrageous? Do they really earn the negative feedback in the end? Did they do nothing to help you? It sounds like they tried for a long time after higher ups were alerted that there was a problem with your situation. To bring square trade in to help resolve this situation is a huge step, one that many ebayers don't do just because of the expense (square trade cases can be a fairly significant loss for sellers). I find that negatives that are left unresolved after there has been an attempt to resolve from the seller are petty and don't reflect the true nature of the ebay community nor the true nature of the transaction.
I came to this board to research the best ebayer to go through for the iRiver I'm getting for my son's birthday, and I think I've found it. I'm sorry that you feel that the level of service that you received was so horrible that this cannot be resolved, however I see a rating of over 130,000 as a fairly good sign that this buyer is trustworthy and an asset to ebay (not to mention the numerous stories I have heard from others on this board about the level of quality product that they have received from this seller!)
Sorry that my first post is this rant, but it really is disturbing to see consumers discredit a company completely when something goes wrong in a transaction, especially on ebay. We're all humans, and mistakes are a possibility in any transaction, ebay or not. When a company tries to make an effort to resolve a situation, it is disheartening to see buyers not recognize this and give the seller a chance to make wrongs right.
-Wanda
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