Hi new to the forums. I'm not exactly a great English speaker but I'll try my best to explain my current situation. It's going to be a long read so please bare with me. So I bought a drum machine from someone in November on eBay. It was a BIN item with free P&P. I paid immediately by paypal and waited for sometime, but it was not even marked as sent on estimated delivery date, so I contacted seller asking if there is any update on my order. She came back to me and said she already sent item out by 1st class signed for on Friday (I contacted her on Monday) so it should be with me by now or Tuesday, the latest. I thought great and waited another few days but item never arrived. I contacted seller again and asked her if she can provide tracking number or status of delivery. She didin't answer. After waiting for another day or two, I contacted seller again saying if she can't help I have to open INR despute to get my money back. This time she came back immediately and said how sorry she is about the situation and gave me a tracking number. Okay I thought, this time I have tracking number so let's wait for another few days. Item arrived next day.... not exactly item but a card. Saying item is held at my local depot because of 9 pound postage due. I contacted seller and explained the situation with photo of the card attached. She came back to me immediately and said how sorry she is and promissed to transfer 9 pounds into my paypal account so that I can pay. Okay very honest seller I thought, but about 30 minutes later I recieved another message saying she can't pay because she hasn't got enough money in her paypal account because she's a student. She asked me to pay the postage due for the time being and said she'll pay me back when she has recieved money from work next month. At this point I started to lose my temper a bit, because to be honest I couldn't understand why she can't ask someone she knows to lend her some money so that she can pay and pay them back later when she has more money, rather than asking a complete stranger like me. I know student's life isn't easy but there are many others who manage to live and enjoy on a tight budget after all. So I told her having no money because you are student is just a excuse, and I'm not happy to pay for postage but she insisted she can't pay and I can open despute if I want to. After much thought, I decided to pay the postage due myself, because I thought I was bit too harsh on her and deal was still pretty good with postage paid anyway. So I told her I'm going to pay the postage due and she shouldn't worry because I'm not expecting her to pay me back. Next day I went to the local depot and paid the postage due and collected item. Item was in a padded envelope with adapter. Not the best packing I saw but not the worst either. I took it back home and started testing and immediately noticed one knob didn't function at all. There was another flaw which was very loose noisy volume knob but it still somehow functioned, but this knob that did't work is very important for sound creation so I was deeply dissapointed especially it was sold as “Excellent condition & full working order”. So I decided to to return the item for a refund. For some reason eBay didn't allow me to return, as "request a return" button was greyed out no matter what. So I had to use paypal to open a SNAD despute. I immidiately escalated the case because I didn't know sellers address to send the item back as it was not written on parcel. Also I contacted seller and recieved reply that she can't refund because she hasn't got money...and to be honest I started to lose my faith in this seller and I couldn't trust what she said anymore sadly(although she was always very polite), so I thoght it would be better if paypal could step in and help our situation. So after few days after escalated the case, I was instructed by PayPal to send the item back to the seller with tracking, which I did(Parcelforce48). I already submitted this tracking number to PayPal which shows item is now delivered back to seller and is signed by her. And it's been 12 days since item was returned but I still haven't heard anything from PayPal nor got the refund. Status says "A claims specialist is reviewing your case." and "We'll contact you with any developments or if we require additional information from you by 25 Dec 2014", which is approaching. So my question is, does refund take this long for everyone? This is my first despute so I'm not quite sure if this is normal or not. If I know I get my money back by 25th, I'm happy to wait but as I have no past experience I'm very worried now. Anyway, thanks a lot for reading. I tried to contact PayPal directly but both phone and email support links are not working for me. Thanks in advance for any inputs. Cheers
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