Messaging a Seller Who Has Not Replied

You sent a message, you were pleased with it, and there has been nothing back. A day goes past, then two, and it starts to feel like a verdict. It very rarely is.

Almost every seller here is one person doing this around a job, a family or both. Messages arrive in the evening, get read on a phone in a queue, and get properly answered on the day they set aside for it. A silence of two or three days is ordinary. A silence over a weekend is close to guaranteed.

So give it a few days before you do anything. When you do follow up, send one message and keep it light. Say you were checking they had seen the earlier one in case it got buried, and repeat the actual question in a single line, because the most common reason a message goes unanswered is that it needed a long reply the seller did not have time to write. If you can make the answer shorter, you make it likelier.

What not to do is easier to list. Do not send the same message again word for word. Do not send a second one the next morning. Do not open with a comment about being ignored, even mildly, because it turns a busy week into an argument. And do not go looking for them somewhere else to ask why they have not replied here, which is the fastest way to end a conversation that was never in trouble.

If a week goes by after a polite follow up, take it as a no and let it be one. It might be stock they no longer have, a request they are not comfortable with, or simply a shop that is quietly closed for a while. You are not owed an explanation and you will feel better for not chasing one.

Then buy from somebody else. There are plenty of shops here, and the one that answers within a day is telling you something useful about how the order will go.