In this particular example, I do want to state that it could have been faster, but I really wanted the item. Basically the Seller delayed as much as possible. Took awhile to get back to emails. Item was shipping from Russia.

In the past I think you had to call in, to escalate for ebay response. I had to call ebay to push for them to make a decision. But now it's fairly easy to escalate.

If you file a claim for refund it's pretty straight forward and easy. Seller will try to offer something, just say no and demand a refund. If seller doesnt, just chose "let ebay decide".

Where I got caught up was I wanted an exchange. Item already took, if i remember about 2.5 weeks to arrive. Item was bad. Got him to ship another one. That took another 2.5 weeks. Wasted a lot of time going back and forth with emails. Until I had enough and called ebay.

Another unrelated example, was seller gave me bad tracking number that went to some other state. Claim it was post office's fault, and gave me another that was bad. I just filed a claim and ebay refunded money.

Important Note: NEVER CLOSE AN EBAY CASE UNTIL YOU ARE 100% SATISFIED. Once you close an eBay case you CANNOT open another claim. They will refuse. If you use PayPal, they will tell you to talk to Paypal, since you are covered by Paypal buyer protect. This is why buyers LOVE PayPal, and sellers hate them. PP like eBay is very buyer friendly, they will side with buyer most of the time.

Sellers will try to make you close a case. They'll say things like, "I will send you a new one, but can you close the case?". Absolutely not until you receive it and are happy. A seller asking you to close a case before item arrives, is a very bad sign.