What Recourse When A Seller Will Not Honor Terms Of A Sale?

I purchased (won at auction) a coil pair that I knew I would be submitting to PSE for authentication. Before entering the auction, I contacted the Seller to ask if the Seller would extend his 14-day return window as long as the Seller was informed that a PSE submission would be made.
The Seller responded that same day as follows: "Yes no problem. I know it can sometimes take 90 days with PSE".
I relied on that assurance when deciding to bid in that auction.
I won the auction, paid for it that same day. The very next day after the stamp pair was delivered to me, I let the Seller know that the stamp pair had been posted by me to PSE for authentication.
Sure enough, the adverse opinion from PSE was delivered last week, some 87 mail-service days after receipt by me submission.
The Seller was notified immediately upon receipt of the adverse certification.
The Seller has so far refused to respond to my requests to return the item for refund, simply not acknowledging my inquiries/messages.
The online platform (the name may or may not rhyme with 'beray') will not respond because, after waiting a week for the Seller (who so far has a 100% positive feedback rating) to respond, the sale is now over 90 days old. I cannot even leave feedback for this sale on that platform at this point.
Any suggestions regarding pursuing a resolution, or am I left hoping karma is real?

File for refund through Paypal, which appears to have 180-day window.

Add: And you will likely have to absorb the cost the the cert.

Agreed, assuming you paid with Paypal. You can also see if the seller is an APS or ASDA member, where a complaint can be filed.

A few takeaways from this.

Only buy stamps of higher value on Ebay with a recent and clean cert.

You are not participating in a real auction on EBay.

Proceed as if the terms & conditions of the sale as written cannot be amended by an email from a seller that will agree to anything to get you to bid.

Ask yourself why the seller did not get a certificate in the first place and increase the sales price by doing so. This is a big one. Especially with US coils.

Forget Ebay feedback. It means ZERO. I repeat, Ebay feedback is meaningless.

Learn from this and next time participate in a real auction and bid on things with certificates. You will never really save any $$$ cheaping out on Ebay.

Would you care to name the seller?

John

File for a Paypal refund. You'll have to wear the cost of obtaining the certificate of course. When you have received the refund, send the stamps back to the seller. Keep the cert, you did after all pay for it.

Assuming that all of the communication between you and the seller regarding the extension occurred within eBay messages, I would start by calling eBay (or more accurately navigating their online help and using their automated chat agent to have someone at eBay call you). Walk the person through the messages one by one, showing them what the seller agreed to.

eBay may very well grant you a refund, or put you on a path to that result.

If that fails, *then* I would do a chargeback through PayPal.

In other words, when you have multiple levels of recourse/refund, you start at the end of the chain and work backwards, initiating a refund/dispute at each point along the way, waiting for a result at each point before moving on to the next, thus maximizing the likelihood of a positive outcome.

Call eBay customer service. Explain to them why it is longer than 90 days. Mention the date and time of the various emails if no longer visible (aged out). When told it is over 90 days, ASK TO THE MATTER TO BE ESCALATED, due to the timing circumstances. Keep pushing for the escalation until some human looks the matter up.

There is no issue with naming the seller here for the protection of other. Post the stamp, the certificate, screen shots of your emails received about winning the item, paying for the item and the like as the eBay information is gone.

One we know the seller there may be more leverage to be had for you.

By the way eBay runs eBay thus you and the seller cannot agree to actions not permitted by eBay, even if you, the buyer and seller agree while on the eBay platform.

EDIT:

Your title is, "What Recourse When A Seller Will Not Honor Terms Of A Sale?"

An equally Correct title is, "What Recourse When A BUYER Will Not Honor Terms Of A Sale as set by eBay?

That answer is easy: None is needed as eBay will protect the seller's interest when the buyer complains outside of eBay's contractual rules as agreed to by the buyer when registering to bid.


Harsh yes, but true nonetheless.

ALSO:

One can never be sure of the reasons a seller delays response. I've had sellers tell me they were in a hospital, were on vacation, had their house flooded, even that they were attending shows or on buying trips. Made-up excuses or not, one has to allow the seller reasonable time to reply; it is not always because they are reluctant to refund. The long game will get you better results; setting deadlines and standards of punctuality rarely works.

My feeling is that the seller is just going to try and resell the stamps as the incorrect identification. I would only return the stamps once you get the refund if the seller pays you for the cert and also pays for full certified delivery so that you can get a signature that he received the stamps and won't later say that he didn't receive them. I don't think that asking for $15 to cover the certified shipment is unreasonable. There is no assurance that he has any moral principles at all.

Rogdcam, where would you put the cutoff for "higher value"?