Annoying Buying Experience On Ebay/Bad Seller

A neutral feedback would be right, the seller has a responsibility to know ebay and paypal policies have changed. It suits ebay to have a comment in the feedback about payment being withheld on the seller as it does discourage selling. The seller may have remorse for selling it at a lower than market price and then on top of that getting whacked with final value fees and paypal fees. I don't blame him and I don't blame you for being disappointed but you lost nothing but time, he could have lost a lot of money and ebay lost the fees.

I'm not exactly sure what ebay did to the seller as the message I got from the seller is not that clear. At the time he sent the message to me, his feedback was all positive with one neutral; however, his star rating for shipping and handling charges was 4.3 out of 5. It doesn't look like the seller had enough transactions to qualify for a seller's discount, so I don't think his fees were increased. From his message, it sounds like ebay put a hold on his funds for a certain period of time before allowing him access to it. Does anyone know if ebay does that?

I had the "21 Day Hold" from PayPal, but the longest I had to wait for my funds was 6 days. All you need to do, as the seller, is send the item the as soon as you can and make sure that the tracking info is entered on ebay or PayPal. The payment is released 3 days after the delivery date. If the buyer gives you good feedback they release the funds immediately.

I started selling more coins for much higher prices so they put my payments on hold. They review the hold every 35 days and as long as you're shipping quickly and don't have any problems with returns or bad feedback, they remove the hold.

I was upset when they placed the hold on my payments, but I would never refuse to send someone an item that they had paid for.

I did start telling my buyers about the hold and asked that they leave feedback as soon as they got the item. Everyone I sold to was happy to help and I only had on person that didn't leave feedback, and never did. That was the only time I had to wait 6 days for the funds to be released.

I also called PayPal once as soon as the coins delivered and asked if they could check why the payment was still on hold. They said they found the "problem", and released the funds without waiting three more days.

The seller could have asked you to leave feedback and had his money in just a few days. He either didn't understand this or thought twice about the price you paid. I would leave bad feedback for him because of the way he handled things. That will also keep his "21 Day Hold" in place.

PayPal sent me an email this week saying that the hold on my payments had been released.

I know your frustration. I've had this happen to me a few times. At least you got a refund right away so they didn't tie up your money for a significant length of time.

One of the most irritating experiences I had was a seller that did this to me on a $500 transaction. I got a refund, but only after 11 days when I inquired about when they shipped the item. Since the seller tied up such a significant amount of money for such a lengthy amount of time, which I certainly could have used for other things, I left a negative.

The other times I've had this happen, the refund was a lot more prompt so I didn't leave any feedback even though maybe I should have.

Luckily I have not had this happen to me, however to me sounds like he is dodgy and I think you are lucky yo get out of the transaction. Imagine pushing to get the coin only to receive it and it not being what you had hoped!
My only similar experience was with a fine silver year set here in Australia where seller had not packaged it appropriately and it got damaged in transit. He initially refused to take it back blaming the post office / courier even after me sending photos of how it was packed. In the end I finally got my money back, but after a lot of time and angst. I made sure that on return I showed him what good packaging was, must have taken him ages to unpack it ;-) but at least it was safe and you could eaisly tell that there could have been no damage it transit simply by how it was packed.

Since he's offering to sell the coin outside of ebay, he's the one breaking their rules, but it sounds like he's leaving them anyways.

You should have told him that, because of the current trust issues and the lack of ebay buyer protection for such a sale, you would only pay him after you receive the coin. You could also have asked for a lower price which he may have accepted as he no longer would have to pay ebay fees. He might go for such a deal to avoid his 21-day hold.