The bigger you grow on eBay, the more problem customers you'll encounter, and the more times you'll feel frustrated at not quite getting your side of the story across to eBay and PayPal. Today, for example, my PowerSeller daughter found an 'Item Not Received' dispute opened against her. The buyer had contacted PayPal, opened the dispute, she had to respond. But wait, this person only paid for their item late yesterday afternoon and filed the dispute because it hadn't arrived first thing today!



For your part, when you respond to PayPal, you are asked to give a postal tracking number and very little else. There's no room to shout 'This man only paid yesterday' or anything like. You give the number, if any, state if you'd like to refund now, and that's it! Nothing else!



No longer true, because this morning I found the elusive backdoor. The box where you type the tracking number is less than one inch long but you don't get cut off after writing fifteen or so characters that might otherwise fill the box. So along with the tracking number you can include a message for PayPal or the buyer, hopefully soon to be ex-buyer. In fact you can add as much as you like, the box just keeps on growing.



So next time you feel badly done to, when you feel like raising the roof, when you just want PayPal and the 'buyer' to see your point of view, put it in the product tracking number section. It works, the man withdrew his complaint a few hours later (presumably after second post arrived)!Avril Harper is a UK based writer and eBay PowerSeller. For more articles about selling on eBay visit www.publishingcircles.com