Is this buyer being unreasonable - opening a case

[biggertentplease]

Hello. Only sell now and then. week and a bit ago sorted out pile of clothes listed them for 7 days - most sold monday - some buyers paid late monday night - others paid tuesday. I had advised that I work and that I would try to send items out Wednesday or Thursday (so within 48-72 hours of payment received). Did that - all sent thursday morning - due to atrocious weather wednesday which stopped me doing anything but getting to work and getting back. Thursday night I marked all as sent. Just looked on ebay today as thinking of listing another batch and see "You have one case open". Buyer - who bought item for 99p - has opened a case - didnt even message me first - their messages states they are very annoyed as paid onTuesday - which in my reckoning is just 4 days today - and expected to have received it by now.

I have responded in a very polite way asking them to let me know if it doesnt arrive mon/tues. I think I know they are being unreasonable but my other question is why do ebay allow cases to be opened at this early stage?

[SantasLittleMonkeyButler]

When you list an item you will be asked to give an 'estimated despatch time' of x amount of working days. eBay will use this, combined with the speed of your offered method of postage (i.e. 1st class = 1 day) to work out an "estimated delivery date" for the Buyer. They can open an item not received case after this date.

Your e-mail should be sufficient though. I am a Business Seller, and whilst I do normally post items either the same or next day - 2 days is certainly not unreasonable.

In future, I would recommend changing your despatch time to about 4 working days, which will give you plenty of time.

[LilyBlossom14]

by asking you where the item is a case is automatically opened if it is within the timescale - I agree, mark your dispatch time as longer.

[catkind]

I noticed ebay changed how it works sometime last year. If you try to send a query to a seller about an item you bought it automatically opens a case. I had a couple of irate responses from sellers before I realised that - I thought I was contacting them politely first, ebay thought otherwise! I'm also not sure if it sent them the "message to seller" I put in, the way they responded I suspect not or not obviously.