eBay
The Item Not Received timeline, hour by hour
Item Not Received is the most common dispute a dropshipper faces, and the one where the outcome is most determined by things that happened before it opened.
The sequence
A buyer cannot open a case immediately. They have to wait until the latest estimated delivery date has passed. That waiting period is your window, and almost nobody uses it.
- Order placed, delivery estimate set
- Parcel is late; buyer checks tracking, finds nothing useful
- Buyer messages you, or does not
- Estimated delivery date passes
- Buyer opens a case
- You respond with evidence, or the case resolves against you
Step four is the deadline that matters
Everything before the estimate passes is preventable. Everything after it is damage control.
A message sent at step two or three - unprompted, with the tracking and an honest statement of where the parcel is - resolves a large proportion of these before they become cases.
Response time once it is open
Once a case exists you have a limited window to respond, and failing to respond resolves it against you automatically. That automatic resolution is the worst outcome available: you lose the money and you take the metric hit without anyone reading your side.
Whatever else you do, respond. Even a holding response is better than silence.
What counts as evidence
Tracking showing delivery. That is essentially it. Tracking showing transit progress helps. Tracking that never scanned is not evidence of anything, which is why the tracking discipline covered elsewhere in this series is really a dispute-prevention discipline.
When to just refund
If the parcel is genuinely lost and you have no delivery scan, you will lose. Refunding before the case escalates costs the same money and avoids the metric impact.
Sellers resist because refunding feels like conceding. The parcel is gone either way; the only variable left is whether you also take the hit.
The pattern worth watching
One case is an event. Several on the same product or the same supplier route is a signal that something structural is wrong - a route that loses parcels, a supplier whose tracking never scans.
Treating each case as an isolated customer-service incident means never finding that pattern.