Ebay Purchases -- How Long Is Too Long?

If paid by Paypal, isn't there much more time for the buyer to file a claim, e.g. 6 months?

There is a longer time period for a paypal claim but it's a different process. The few paypal claims I've had have always come to me as "unauthorized payment" rather than "item not received", and I have won every single one of them.

A couple weeks ago my wife ordered me a coffee cup, I wasn't paying attention and let her handle it. After a few days she started to wonder where it was, so I looked into it. She'd bought it on ebay from a seller with 1 feedback, and she paid $41 for an item that is available at Kohls for $20. To compound matters it looks like the seller doesn't use tracking.

Today was the last day of the delivery window. I was thinking about contacting the seller and asking what was going on, but suddenly I was notified that I'd been refunded the purchase price for the reason "Item not received". I have no idea what happened, I checked and the seller was still active so he hasn't been kicked off ebay. I've never seen anything like this before.

I Have an item sitting in a postal distribution center 5 miles from my house that is destined for SC. Been there for a month without movement - according to USPS investigator it is pallatized with 10s of thousand of other letters and packages slowly being fed into mail stream. Its a pandemic folks and USPS was not equipped to handle the volume of mail and packages they received in December. Time for patience.

I am pissed at ebay however for their lack of ability to manage the problem which is affecting 100s of thousands of sellers. My late shipment rate is thru the roof and a miniscule part of that is my fault. Tracked packages sent by me on time are slow in arriving and I am getting dinged for it. I will need to address that with ebay when I get time.

Problems, problems, problems - 1st world problems.

Something needs to change at the USPS. Fedex and UPS adapt to problems. I think about the prescription drugs, perishables, legal documents, bills, checks and other important to at times critical items that the USPS has failed to deliver and it is unacceptable. I get the sense that some people are willing to make excuses for the USPS that they would not make for commercial entities.

I have a valuable Registered piece of mail that has completely disappeared for a month now. If I were to flaunt the USPS rules for shipping restrictions they would be all over me but when they stop tracking and obtaining signatures for Registered mail possession it is understandable because of current conditions it is OK? No, it is not OK or acceptable.