COURTEOUS s ETIQUETTE FOR BUYING

Sometimes, just when I think I've seen and heardit all on okay, I get surprised all over again....and, sadly, lately, my surprises are is not the kind that make me want to jump up and down with joy either! Since I am both a Buyer and a Seller on okay, I get to encounter and deal with BOTH the buyers and the sellers on each end. For some unbeknownst reason, this past year or so, I am finding that okay etiquette is slipping.....badly!
Here's a recent example I have encountered as a Buyer: I bought an item 3 weeks ago and have not yet received it - even though I paid this Seller immediately upon the auction's end. When I paid for the Seller's item, I specifically emailed the Seller asking that she email me with tracking numbers. No response whatsoever! After a week had gone by and no item being delivered, I again emailed her....no response. I then emailed this Seller 4 more times before I requested her Contact information and telephoned her. The owner of this account told me that she knew nothing of this auction but that her grown daughter may have been using her account! (What???? Why in the world would you let someone else use your okay account?) She told me that she would contact her daughter and have her call me. To her credit, she did follow through on this and the daughter did call me. Now...I hope you're sitting down for this one: The daughter told me that she had not been looking at her emails OR her messages through okay since she sold this item to me and therefore, didn't know that I'd been trying to contact her! (Excuse me, but, if you are selling something, wouldn't you be checking your okay account or at least be looking at your emails? I'm very sure though that she must have checked at least once after that auction ended or else how did she know that I'd paid her immediately and that she had her money in her hot little hands/Paypal account?!) Here's where it really gets "good": When I asked her when and IF she had mailed out my item, she replied that No, she still hadn't gotten around to mailing it out because she wanted to sell a few more things before she had to go to the post office so that she could just mail everything at once! She promised to then mail it out to me that day. Yes, you guessed it! It's been another 8 days since my phone conversation with her and I have still not received my item, so I have now filed against her with Paypal!
On the "flip" side, here's another example I have recently encountered as a Seller: I had an auction item end where the winning buyer had bid 22 times out of the 36 bids on my item. She even put in her last bid a mere 33 seconds before the auction's end, so I knew that she must be hanging around her geputer. All of my auctions state quite clearly in the listing description that the winning bidder is required to pay for the item within 24 hours after the auction ends. As I do with each of my auctions, I immediately invoiced her and also sent her a "Winning Buyer Notification" email to congratulate her on her win (and to also, hopefully, speed up the payment process!). No payment from this buyer and no gemunication of any kind. After my prescribed 24 hours had passed, I again sent her a 2nd invoice and another email to the effect that I had not yet received her payment. Still nothing! After 48 hours had passed, I then requested her contact information and called her. She gave this as her excuse for not paying: Said that she didn't know that she had won the item and therefore hadn't been checking her okay messages or her email!! Now gee on! You don't bid 22 times on an item with your last bid a mere 33 seconds before it ends and not check to see whether you've won the item or not! How ludicrous and how stupid did she think I am? No, the truth of the matter is that she did not take her 22 bids and her win as a serious contractual agreement - plain and simple!
Do you see what I mean about okaycourtesy slipping drastically? Again, since I am both a Buyer and a Seller, I hereby propose a very simple set of, what I will call "okay Rules of Etiquette":
SELLER ETIQUETTE:


Put the terms of your listing payment and shipping clearly in your description so that Buyers know exactly how to pay, how much for shipping, when to pay