Seller slowing the Ping refund?

In all honesty Susan I think this is a question for TM themselves - I wouldn't like to speculate here.

If you aren't able to reply to the Dispute Resolution Email you can contact a TradeMe Staff member directly for assistance via their "Live Chat" facility - Have you ticket Reference number handy so it is quicker for the agent to assist.

Yes! If you are asking for the Trade to be Completed - I am reading this is a Refund Request - Cheers.

Thanks for the replies all. 
Yes, I have requested a refund and as I paid with Ping, thought this would be fairly straightforward. And yes, I did wait the obligatory 6 days for the “seller” to respond (they didn’t);and I did reply to TM that the trade had not been completed - I then received this:

 “We’ve again contacted this seller with your concerns and encouraged them to come to an agreement with you directly and from here we’ll assess your case and will be in touch with you within four weeks regarding this matter and your eligibility under Buyer Protection. We’re experiencing higher volumes of work than normal, but rest assured a Disputes Officer will pick your case up in due course.”

So, if I do receive a Ping refund, I would have waited about 7 weeks for a refund. I guess any protection is better than none, however, I thought Ping would be a little more timely.

Cheers Susan, 

While you're waiting check out the Buyer Protection policy – Help - Trade Me - more specifically the eligibility criteria, - Hang in there - Cheers 😊

Here is my rough flowchart of how the process works in my experience. Each step can take 10 days or more, so yes, it does take a long time. Too long IMO.

Yes! Susan has an added wait pending Payment with TM advising a further four weeks due to being short staffed, as per their email.

Given the added 4 week timeframe I can see why you queried if it was due to the Seller delaying the process Susan though now you have TM's confirmation of short staff lets hope Callum doesn't have to extend the flow chart out to 7/8 weeks becoming the 'New Norm' coming forward. - Cheers.

An update: I received the full Ping refund yesterday. This was settled 16 days following the first dispute filing. The seller apparently claimed this was a courier mixup, changing her story from - her children were sick, then she was sick etc. I prefer Ping as it usually keeps me out of the weeds with seller (and buyers) but unfortunately, not this time as I copped some very aggressive emails from the seller when I queried delivery time frame. Eventually my trust in Ping was warranted. 

Lastly, I believe the seller did indeed stall the refund process by firstly ignoring TM emails and then falsely claiming a problem with the courier. My thanks to Diz at Disputes for sorting this out for me. 

That's great to hear Susan and not the 4 weeks extra delay you were expecting from your TM email either. Thanks for letting us know - Cheers. 😊

Increased workload at TM maybe due to a disturbing trend i am finding with high volume vendors importing what appears to be low quality products. I have purchased 3 products from 3 different vendors over the last 6months...and all have arrived faulty. Thankfully 2 of 3 have resolved the issue but it does take time. Going through last one now. Im 5 weeks in and still no result. If it happened to me 3 times in 6 months, i shudder to think how many cases TM are handling overall.

TM needs to caution these big vendors. They are breaching the fair trading act and spoiling an almost perfect trading experience over the many years ive been a member..