Calling all Ebayers...

I bought this FABULOUS new dress on Ebay. It is a prom dress for my daughter...normally a $400 dress and I got it for $60. She was ecstatic! It is THE perfect dress for her Senior year.
Person has had an account since 2002 and had 100% feedback.
I paid today through PayPal--10 min after I paid, the seller is no longer a registered user on Ebay.
What are my chances of getting the dress? Anyone else have this happen to them?

Try to get their contact information from eBay and contact the seller directly.

I did get the merchandise...somehow the seller's account in my case had been temporarily (and in error) suspended.

The possibility that she won't get her dress, or that I lost $70 (with shipping), or that my daughter bought all the accessories to match the dress.:(

You do have recourse through both eBay and PayPal (if you paid via PayPal).

Just because the seller might have gotten kicked off of eBay, doesn't mean they'll lose PayPal.

Email them and ask for their contact info.

technical glitches. I would try to contact the seller. Especially since they have 100% feedback and have been a member for a long time. I just had a buyer whose account was suddenly "locked" for no apparent reason. It was worked out within a few days.
There are buyer protections through Paypal also.
Good luck!

I bought a computer item and when I received it and tried to leave positive feedback I couldn't do it because the seller was listed as no longer a registered user. It was only days after the auction.

I wouldn't be worried about it yet. Default to probability. Three years of activity and feedback trumps a strange listing of the account status. If it had been a scam the price would have been much higher. Send a question to the seller along with responding via the email you recived as winning bidder. Go back to the feedback and see if the person sold anything else recently. You can even contact those buyers and ask about the experience with this seller. Also the feedback will tell you if they bought anything on eBay recently.

First, contact Paypal and get them started on an investigation.

Lodge a complaint with Ebay and get that going.

If your Paypal account is tied to a credit card, contact them now.

Try to contact the seller.

Start looking for another dress.

Don't wait. Het this running. If the seller comes through, you can stop the other stuff. Don't expect that to happen. Do NOT expect that to happen.

Good luck.

I sent 3 e-mails to the seller that all went unanswered. Then I tried to tell e-bay that I didn't receive the item and not enough time had passed yet. I contacted my Discover Card (my paypal goes to it) and Discover told me e-bay is very good at resolving these types of situations. I waited another week or so and contacted e-bay. After about another week or so I had my payment refunded by Paypal. I never did get the item or any type of answer from the seller. If it were me, I would just worry about trying to get my $$ back. Good Luck!

with them...

they refunded money for me in a matter of hours once.

there are any number of reasons for suspension on ebay. you can request contact info here:

http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?UserInformationRequest

if you do not get a satisfactory response from the seller, then you can go through paypal.

i think you should give the seller a chance. they may have been suspended because of an ebay error, because of an account problem, because of some ebay rule the seller doesn't know about, a hijacked account...

(personal experience - i'm a seller and got suspended once - i followed through with all pending transactions, and got good feedback for every one of them when my account was un-suspended)

Ebay just lets stuff happen, the system is supposed to regulate itself. The prick that got me is still there. I had my chance to get him back, his MO is to sell something as working, then ship something that doesn't work and try to blame the Post Office. He'll claim that it was damaged by the Post Office and to get your money from them. It was Mail Fraud, I contacted the Post Office, but lost interest after going through endless ebay complaint protocols. I saw on his feedback he has done it again.