Remember my bad experience with a certain seller on Etsy? I took your advice and reported her to Etsy AND filed a claim with PayPal. PayPal then initiated communication with the seller, but guess what? She didn’t respond. Not once. So PayPal ruled in my favor! But wait:
After careful review, we have concluded our investigation of the Buyer Complaint described below.
We have decided in your favor, however, we were unable to recover any funds from the seller’s account. As stated in the PayPal User Agreement, recovery of funds associated with a Buyer Complaint cannot be guaranteed.
Please know that we will make our best effort to recover the funds in question if they become available in the seller’s account in the future and will take appropriate action against the seller. Such action may include issuing a warning, a temporary restriction, or terminating the account. Keep in mind that PayPal uses a number of factors to determine when to take action, including member complaints. Due to privacy laws, we cannot discuss the details of any action taken. We hope you understand our policy and that it assures you that you are safe using PayPal.
So, in short, I won the claim but I STILL don’t get my money back. The seller doesn’t have any PayPal funds?? What did she do, screw everyone over and skip town? Or is she dead in a ditch somewhere, or what? 
I’m just saying, it’s really odd to sell hundreds of items on Etsy and then suddenly flake and apparently disappear entirely.
sigh. I don’t know, in the grand scheme of things, I’ll take this as a lesson, I suppose. Granted, she had 100% positive feedback at the time of my purchase but I guess I should be more conservative and only purchase one thing at a time from a seller I’ve never shopped with.
Since PayPal ruled in my favor and other people have left her negative feedback, I’m comfortable posting the seller’s link. This is not to bash her publicly, it’s more of a consumer alert. Word to the wise, do NOT buy from her. You won’t get what you paid for, or a refund, or a reply to your many emails, for that matter. 
did you click on her shop home? i did out of curiosity, and she’s claiming that the mailman has told her her packages have been getting stolen out of her mailbox. whatever.
Bummer
I wonder if something *did* happen to her though. I hope not… though, just up and abandoning your customers is not good…
That stinks you won’t get your money back. It *is* really weird that she was a good seller for so long and then went AWOL. Maybe something horrible did happen, or maybe she just conveniently disappeared. Who knows.
hmm it didn’t say that last night when I checked her shop. hopefully she will do right… but that whole paypal thing has me suspicious!
That’s really crappy. Thanks for putting a link to the seller and letting us know about it.
I checked, and the note is still up on her shop home. She also got a couple more negative feedbacks since I left mine, too. It’s just sad.
I wondered if something bad happened in her personal life, but the empty PayPal account? Something is definitely fishy there.