The biggest problem for the buyer is that she only has 45 days from date of purchase to open a case in eBay. If she seems willing to work with you, I would encourage her to wait until close to the deadline and then open a case. That way, she has protection if the item isn't delivered, but you don't have to refund her money right away. However, you risk receiving negative feedback with any delay. You'll have to judge how frustrated or accepting the buyer is with the delay vs. your willingness to lose your money and the item. As other posters have suggested, keeping the buyer informed as to the steps you are taking is always reassuring to the buyer.

I posed you question to DS who has a lot of EBay experience and here is his answer . It is all Greek to me but maybe you'll understand it in any event a good telephone number to have on hand "Either she needs to cancel the listing early and lose the insertion fee and then reload the listing with the correct amount or let the listing run it's course and start a new listing when the old listing ends. Have her call eBay 866-643-2959 if she doesn't have a telephone ID already she will have to recreate one to get customer service."

Only if you give me a good kick Kim. LOL Like you, I want to be sure I've got something sellable before wasting my time and listing fee money. I just wish our Craig's List was more active here. I need to give it a try too. Since it's free, I have nothing to lose I guess. I also have large appliance items that I need to list in our local classified weekly. It's just getting it done. I don't have a very good excuse not to be doing it either. Ok, I'm bending over then it's your turn. LOL

Well really, are you sure you WANT a piece of lingerie back from such a person? Euuuu. I've had many things to sell but have always been too chicken to become a seller, lest I run into this kind of scamming, so my hat's off to you for doing it. But from the standpoint of a prolific ebay buyer, there are some sellers out there who scam as well. As someone said, you aren't face to face. You don't know what kind of person you're really dealing with, so it's a little iffy. I hate to say it but I would just let him keep the thing and chalk it up as a lesson, and then ban him from buying from you again. If all sales are final, then make it very very clear in your listing, and go out of your way to make disclaimers. On this one you could say "This is a vintage item so the sizing may be different than today's sizing, but across the waist it measures ____". Then nobody can fault you. The other thing you might do is have some communication with the buyer before sending the merchandise. Before I buy something I always email the seller asking a question. OK usually the question is for real, but sometimes it's just so I can get a feel for them. It almost always becomes very apparent when it's someone you don't want to deal with. This is more problematic for sellers because if you got that feeling, you'd have to reneg on your auction, so maybe my idea isn't so bright! It seemed strange when ebay announced sellers couldn't leave negative FB any longer, but I figured they must have their own private spot on ebay where they report nasty buyers to each other.