Dear all,

I've purchased two pens and a bottle of ink from generally-well-reviewed Ebay member engeika. This was halfway through April. I received a tracking number but the parcel never showed up here. Instead it was returned to Japan, presumably by Dutch customs. Final delivery according to tracking was 5 May.

On the 7th, I sent a message to the email address included in their tracking number email to which I never got a reply. Then I sent a message through Ebay on the 13th, and then I got (on 14 May):

I will let you know when i get the package and also will contact the post office to let you know the reason.Please wait for few days

Then on the 28th of May I sent a message that it was well beyond 'a few days' now. On the 29th I got this message:

Sorry for the late reply.
But the post office reply is very late in japan as there are many procedure to follow and lot of emailing and phones has to be done. This hows ths systems works here.
We had sent your parcel properly but the post office of your country said that your address was invalid and thus they returned it back to us.
if you want us to resent it again to you please give your proper name, address, telephone number in English to us
I hope this helps and solves everything

Immediately I sent then them my correct address and phone number, assuming they would indeed (re)send my items. I was a bit surprised I didn't hear anything to that effect but the parcel could arrive any day now right?

On June 18 I send a message saying "I still have nothing please let me know what is going on".

To that I got a message "Thanks for your mail.I had already sent you items.Here is the tracking number.<>"
As I went to check I found that this was the old number, from the failed shipment. Nothing new seemed to have happenend!

The message I then sent was this:

That tracking number shows a parcel that has been returned to Japan. We discussed this issue already. Something went wrong with delivery. You asked me to provide my address and phone number, which I did. Here it is again:
[..]
As far as I can tell nothing new has happened since, and I don't seem to be closer to receive the items I have payed for over two months ago.
Please send me my items asap.

And got this:

Thanks for your mail.The item was sent to your following address,
<incorrect address>
I will check with post office and will let you know the situation when i get the package.
With regards,

At this point I was really fed up:

<explanation of how my address was wrong (house number was missing) and how it should be - inclusion of previous email mentioned above>

I then mailed you my address and told you I am still looking forward to receiving the items. I assumed you would then send the parcel to the correct address I supplied, but apparently nothing has happened since.

And now you are telling me I have to wait while you do the looking-into-process AGAIN?!

This is really abominable service. I trust you will make clearing this up your highest priority.

I have not heard from them since. I have asked for my money back

Clearly I have been too patient, as I now found that Paypal/Ebay can't help me with transactions that old, but is there anything I can still do?

Any tips welcome.

PS: I also emailed Ebay helpdesk because I can't give feedback on old transactions anymore either. That is a HUGE problem because it skews the data - anything that takes longer than six weeks and maybe never gets resolved automatically gets filtered?! Woah.