eBay makes you wait a week to rate a sale as anything other than positive.
Also, it won't let me double-check my order to make sure, in this case, that they really did claim that the book was in good condition when there are pages falling out. No matter what I click on, it won't let me.
I rarely buy anything from eBay, but I really didn't think someone would be that dishonest about the condition of a book. And I guess eBay facilitated it.
The worst part is that I used to be an eBay seller about 10 years ago and eBay would not have been this courteous to me back then. Serious enshittification.
IIRC in recent years eBay made it so that if you are one of their “top rated” sellers, buyers can’t leave the neutral or negative feedback for a week. Which is nice and all for sellers that are trying to resolve any issues a buyer may have, but not nice for situations like this one.
You also can't leave bad reviews if you return an item.
I bought an item that had issues, wanted to return it and the seller accused me of sending back in a different item. Once I got ebay involved I got them to approve the return, but like a day later I got a message from the seller that I assume he meant to send to someone else accusing them of trying to scam them as well. I almost wanted to eat the $40 so I could leave the bad review, but I know ebay would just remove it or something.
I had a fake item sent to me, reported to eBay to request a refund, got an immediate refund, seller asked to return the item. I said no, its fake I'll bin it. Left negative feedback that the items are fake. eBay then removed the review and let the seller keep selling. At least he had one less item to sell and was out of pocket on postage
Contact the seller via ebay messages with pics and they will either send you a replacement, give a refund, or ignore you. A lot of high volume sellers don’t even bother to check and just mark everything as good used condition. If they ignore you just request a refund after a few days.
Time for some F12 fuckery to re-enable those buttons. Worst case scenario, there's some extra serverside checks that make the page say no somewhere else.
Did you reach out to the seller to confirm? In my experience, if the listing has expired which happens when only one 1 item is being sold, eBay doesn’t show all the info after the sale. I try to look up old orders and this happens a lot.
The sellers are usually responsive and care about their ratings so they will provide any listing clarification or even a refund before you can leave a negative review. eBay is also good with buyer protection if the sellers refuses a refund. I suspect eBay cannot change their reviews so they are giving time for the sellers to resolve any issues.