I just received the following e-mail from ESM regarding an item I won on ebay from them and paid for a couple weeks ago but never received. Anybody have any insight into exactly what happened?

Thankfully the item I won was a fairly common bat (I was surprised when I won it) but I am sure there are some other pretty unhappy forum members out there who might have lost some more valuable items.

Below is the e-mail:

Hello Elite Sports Marketing Ebay Customer:

Unfortunately the item that you won from ESM is no longer available.Your payment has therefore been refunded via Paypal, or is in the process of refund via credit card or check depending on your payment method.

This problem is due to a recent theft at our company, and we have been working frantically to fix the problems as quickly as possible.This has affected many of our Ebay customers, and we understand that for many these fixes have not come nearly fast enough.

Our communication has been delayed in many cases as well, as we deal with the legalities of the issue and attempt to determine the best method of rectifying the situation from all angles.

The only thing we can do at this point is make an attempt to remedy the problems by ensuring every payment for which there is no product is refunded.We are nearly completely through with this process.

For those of you that are new customers, you will most likely never buy from our company again after this experience.This is understandable.For those that are returning customers, your frustration is by no means lessened by our previous successful transactions.We do hope, however, that you will recall our track record of low prices, fast shipping, and great communication so that we can move forward from this negative experience and rebuild our many healthy relationships.

We understand that situations such as these are inexcusable and this is a huge setback for our company.We are in the process of implementing further security measures in our building and screening processes to prevent such an incident from occurring in the future.

We are looking forward to moving past this horrible March and into a prosperous baseball season.

ESM EBAY CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM