Dispute process

Has anyone recently gone through Trade Me’s dispute process as a buyer?

I purchased an item and paid using Ping, specifically because of the buyer protection policy. After the purchase, I emailed the seller, but received no reply. Two days later, their email bounced back with an error stating the address no longer existed.

I reported this to Trade Me, and they advised that the seller has up to a week to complete the trade, so I needed to wait. However, because the seller had not contacted me within 48 hours, I filed a dispute. The automated response I received instructed me to wait a full week before any action would be taken.

Now that a week has passed, I followed up with Trade Me to check on the status of the dispute and to see if they had managed to contact the seller. They told me they could not confirm whether contact had been made and explained that the dispute is still moving through their automated process.

When I asked for a timeline of the process, they again said they could not confirm, and advised me to simply watch for an email from the dispute team.

At this stage, I would like the trade cancelled and my payment refunded, as the seller appears to be uncontactable.

Has anyone had a similar experience and successfully recovered their money? If so, how long did it take? I’m finding this situation increasingly frustrating.