Refunds
The case opened two days before the parcel would have arrived
The most frustrating case I ever watched a seller lose was one where the parcel was delivered two days after the buyer opened it.
Two more days of patience and there'd have been no case at all.
Buyers open Item Not Received cases on their own clock, and it rarely lines up with reality. Sometimes they open one when the parcel is genuinely lost. Sometimes they open one when it's a suburb away, out for delivery tomorrow. From the eBay screen, those two situations look identical: one open case, one anxious buyer.
But your response should be opposite. If the parcel is basically there, you hold, you reassure, you show the tracking. If it's genuinely stalled with no movement, you refund fast and protect your metrics. The deciding fact is how close the parcel actually is — and that fact lives in the AliExpress logistics data, not on the case screen.
Why sellers guess wrong
Because in the panic of an open case, they react to the case, not the parcel. They refund a delivery that was one scan from the door, or they dig in on a parcel that's been dead for a week. The information to tell those apart was sitting in the tracking detail the whole time.
Fetch Order Tracking keeps the estimated delivery date and the latest logistics state next to the order, so when a case lands you can read the parcel's real position in seconds instead of guessing. Close to delivery: hold and reassure. Genuinely stalled: refund and move on before it becomes a defect.
The case is loud. The parcel is quiet. Decide based on the quiet one.
Next time a case opens, check the last scan and the delivery estimate before you touch the refund button.
Half the time, the parcel is closer than the panic suggests.