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?

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.

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.

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.