Item-not-received cases, auto-decide against you after 8 days no response.
At a glance
The live count of “Item Not Received” (INR) cases opened by buyers and not yet resolved. eBay’s clock starts the moment a buyer files an INR; if the seller fails to respond within 8 days the case auto-decides in the buyer’s favour, eBay refunds the buyer from your funds, and the case counts as a defect against your seller-standards tier.
| What it counts | COUNT(cases WHERE caseType = 'INR' AND caseStatus IN ('OPEN', 'AWAITING_SELLER_RESPONSE')) from the Sell Fulfillment / Cases API. Snapshot at last refresh, real-time data. |
| Listing-format scope | All formats. INR cases are filed against the order, not the listing format. Auctions, fixed-price, and Best-Offer-resolved orders all generate INR cases at similar rates per order. |
| GMV / fees framing | Each INR case carries the full order value (pricingSummary.total.value) at risk. The count alone doesn’t show the £-exposure; pair with Revenue at Risk for the £ view. |
| Promoted Listings | Promoted-driven orders generate INR cases at similar rates to organic; the case itself doesn’t differentiate. |
| Multi-site aggregation | Cases from every connected marketplaceId are summed. UK + US sellers see one combined count; filter by site if you need per-marketplace breakdown. |
| Currency | Not applicable, this is a count metric. |
| Best-Offer-resolved orders | Eligible for INR cases identically to BIN; the negotiated total is the case value. |
| Refunds | A seller-issued refund before case resolution closes the case favourably (no defect). After auto-resolution, the refund is forced and the defect is recorded. |
| Cancellations | Pre-payment cancellations are not eligible for INR. Post-payment cancellations transition to the cancellation flow, not the case flow. |
| Time window | RT (real-time). The count updates within 30 to 90 seconds of any case state change via webhook. |
| Alert trigger | >0 unresolved >5d (any case open for more than 5 days), driven by sentiment_key: defect_rate. The 5-day threshold gives a 3-day cushion before eBay’s 8-day auto-resolution. |
| Roles | owner, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your eBay data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US fashion seller running ebay.com only. Snapshot 28 Apr 26, 09:00 ET.| Case ID | Order placed | INR opened | Days open | Order value | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5400123 | 12 Apr 26 | 22 Apr 26 | 6 days | $84 | Awaiting seller response (alert tripped) |
| 5400189 | 18 Apr 26 | 25 Apr 26 | 3 days | $128 | Awaiting seller response |
| 5400211 | 20 Apr 26 | 26 Apr 26 | 2 days | $46 | Open (buyer messaged, not yet escalated) |
| 5400233 | 22 Apr 26 | 27 Apr 26 | 1 day | $92 | Open |
| Total | $350 | 4 cases, 1 over the 5-day threshold |
- Case 5400123 is the alert. It’s been open 6 days, the seller has 2 days left before eBay auto-resolves it in the buyer’s favour. The card is amber on this case alone; the others are within the safe response window.
- Auto-resolution costs more than the order value. If 5400123 auto-decides, the seller loses the 84.
- The fix is usually trivial. 80% of INR cases are resolved by the seller pasting the tracking number into the case message. Most “INR” cases are actually buyers who haven’t checked the tracking themselves; the seller’s response shifts responsibility to the carrier and closes the case favourably.
- The remaining 20% are real fulfilment issues. Lost-in-transit, wrong-address-keyed, signature-required-but-not-attempted. For these, the seller needs to refund proactively (case closes favourably if seller-resolved) rather than wait for auto-resolution (case closes as a defect).
- The 5-day card threshold is the right early-warning level. The 8-day auto-resolution clock is firm; aiming to respond within 5 days gives a 3-day buffer for warehouse / carrier round-trips. Sellers who treat the 8-day clock as the deadline regularly get caught by carrier delays.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
INR is one upstream input. Pair it with these to act:| Card | Why pair it with Open INR Cases |
|---|---|
| INR Burst Alert (24h) | Real-time alert when more than 2 new INR cases land within 24 hours, signals a fulfilment / carrier problem rather than scattered buyer behaviour. |
| Cases without Resolution | Tracks the cases that already auto-resolved against you. Every row here means a defect already on the record. |
| Defect Rate | Each auto-resolved INR adds to the running defect rate. Direct cause-and-effect link. |
| Late Shipment Rate | Late-shipped orders are 3 to 5x more likely to generate an INR case. This card is often the leading indicator for late-shipment-driven INR clusters. |
| Revenue at Risk | The £ view, sums the order value of every open case. INR is one of the inputs. |
| Seller Standards | The cliff-effect outcome. INR-driven defect rate breaching 0.5% costs you TRS. |
| Health Score | INR open count is one of the four composite inputs (20% weight). |
| Amazon A-to-z Claims | Marketplace peer. Amazon’s A-to-z guarantee claim is the equivalent dispute mechanism. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in eBay Seller Hub:Seller Hub → Orders → Cases (US) or the UK equivalent. Filter by Case status: Open. The count here matches this card 1-to-1 in real time.The “Resolution Centre” at eBay → My eBay → Resolution Centre is the legacy view; modern Sell-API integrations should reconcile against Seller Hub Cases. Timing, settlement, and reporting-lag table:
| Topic | Detail |
|---|---|
| Timezone | Case-opened timestamps are in UTC in the API; Seller Hub displays in account timezone (Pacific Time for US accounts by default). The “days open” calculation in this card uses UTC; small (sub-1-day) discrepancies vs Seller Hub at the boundary are normal. |
| Settlement / payout impact | An auto-resolved INR forces a refund from the seller’s funds. Funds-on-hold for the case order are released to the buyer; the seller’s payout for the period is reduced accordingly. |
| Promoted Listings cost reporting lag | Not applicable, ad costs aren’t relevant to INR cases. |
| API throttling | Cases API is webhook-driven; new cases push within 30 to 90 seconds. Polling fallback runs every 5 minutes. The count is effectively real-time. |
| Case-state cadence | eBay’s auto-resolution clock is exactly 8 days from case-opened timestamp. The card’s 5-day alert threshold gives a 3-day cushion. The clock pauses if the case escalates to eBay (rare; only for fraud / appeals). |
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Status filter | Either | Seller Hub’s “Open Cases” tile may include AWAITING_BUYER_RESPONSE cases; this card excludes them (those are not the seller’s action item). Toggle Seller Hub’s filter to match if reconciling exactly. |
| Refresh latency | Ours within 90s | A buyer-opened case may briefly appear in Seller Hub before our webhook fires. Sub-2-minute discrepancies are normal. |
| Closed-just-now cases | Ours within 90s | A case the seller resolved 30 seconds ago drops from Seller Hub immediately; our card may show it for up to 90 seconds longer. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
amazon.atoz_claims | Marketplace peer. Amazon’s A-to-z claim is the structural equivalent. Different SLA (Amazon gives sellers 48 hours to respond before auto-resolving), different fee implications. | Independent populations, used for peer-benchmarking, not reconciliation. A seller with high INR but low A-to-z usually has eBay-specific dispatch / tracking-upload issues. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
What’s an INR case? INR = “Item Not Received”. A buyer files this through eBay’s Resolution Centre when they say the order hasn’t arrived. The seller has 8 days from case-open to respond (upload tracking, message the buyer, or refund) before eBay auto-resolves the case in the buyer’s favour. What happens if I don’t respond in 8 days? eBay auto-decides the case for the buyer. They get refunded from your funds, you keep the loss, and the case is recorded as a defect against your seller-standards. A single auto-resolved INR can flip a healthy seller’s defect rate above the 0.5% TRS cap. The card alerts at 5 days to give you a 3-day cushion. My buyer says they didn’t get the item but tracking shows delivered, what do I do? Respond to the case with the tracking number and the carrier’s “delivered” scan. If tracking shows delivery to the buyer’s address, eBay typically sides with the seller and closes the case favourably. If the carrier’s GPS scan was significantly off the buyer’s address (a common Amazon Logistics / DHL issue), the buyer may still win. Photo evidence of doorstep delivery (if the carrier captured it) usually decides the case in your favour. Are INR cases included in the defect rate? Only when they auto-resolve against the seller, or close as “Case closed without seller resolution”. Seller-resolved INRs (refund issued, tracking provided, replacement sent) do NOT count as defects. So responding fast keeps you out of trouble even if the volume of cases is high. Why are my INR cases clustered to specific dates? Almost always a fulfilment-side incident: a carrier hub delay (DHL, FedEx, Royal Mail), a warehouse mis-routing, a label-print failure. The INR Burst Alert card is designed to detect this pattern (more than 2 new cases in 24 hours = systemic issue, not random buyer behaviour). My multi-site count, can I see which marketplace each case is from? Yes, the card shows a per-marketplaceId breakdown when expanded. Different sites have different INR rate baselines: ebay.co.uk runs slightly higher INR rates than ebay.com because Royal Mail’s “delivered” scans are GPS-noisy and buyers often dispute. ebay.de runs lower because DHL Germany has very accurate scans.
Does Promoted Listings affect INR rate?
Indirectly. Promoted-driven orders are typically converting from clicks into checkout faster (less buyer reflection time), so promoted sales include more impulse buyers who may dispute small unmet expectations. Effect size is small (under 0.1% INR rate uplift) but measurable.
Why doesn’t this card show on Shopify or Amazon’s standard reports?
Because INR is an eBay-specific case mechanism. Amazon has A-to-z guarantee claims (similar concept, different SLA: 48 hours to respond). Shopify has buyer-initiated chargebacks but no equivalent “case” system, the dispute goes through the payment processor (Stripe / PayPal). Cross-platform reconciliation isn’t apples-to-apples.
My cases are open but the buyer hasn’t messaged me yet, do I still need to respond?
Yes. The 8-day clock starts at case-open, not at first buyer message. Many sellers wait for buyer dialogue and miss the response window. Best practice: the moment a case opens, post the tracking number and a polite “Hi, here is the tracking link, please check delivery scan” message. This shifts the case state from “Awaiting seller response” (counts against you if it expires) to a state where the buyer needs to act.