eBay advice - item not delivered (but proof of postage)

ryanverbena

It's been nearly a month now and clearly Royal Mail has ballsed up a delivery. I've tried to track it down through them but they have been super unhelpful. Contacted the buyer who became super defensive and essentially blaming me. 

Basic question is, does any know eBay's policy on this? It seems the kind of situation where Royal Mail need to pay compensation for a lost item, but is that my responsibility or the sellers? He seems to think it's all on me.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

You can see here the status of the item, looks like it got caught up in the network, good couple of weeks ago now. 

drofluf

Royal Mail's contract is with the seller so it should be the seller who claims compensation. At least that's my understanding

chrisj1602

I would put a claim in with Royal Mail. Do you have adequate cover? I had something similar, though my buyer was very understanding. Royal Mail coughed up without issue.

goldtop

ryanverbena said:

 Contacted the buyer who became super defensive and essentially blaming me. 

...

but is that my responsibility or the sellers? He seems to think it's all on me.

Are you seller or buyer? In any case, it's all on the sender of the package.

ElectricXII

Something similar happened to me last year. As I was the seller, I had to refund the buyer and claim from Royal Mail.

LionAquaLooper

You can claim compensation after x number of days (i forgot exactly how many) and you'd be within your right to because you've got tracking.  

Quick question though - what was the sale price and what level of cover does the service you bought have?  For example, if you bought RM Tracked 48 the cover is £150 max but the value of the item was £200, then you "might" have a problem.  I asked my local post office contact about that type of scenario and she said RM won't fork out the max compensation (£150) and you lose just £50.  Apparently it's not as simple as that.  YMMV.   

ryanverbena

@goldtop ; I'm the buyer in this situation.

@lionaqualooper it was a £50 purchase.

By the looks, he sent it 2nd class. 

goldtop

ryanverbena said:

@goldtop ; I'm the buyer in this situation.

@lionaqualooper it was a £50 purchase.

By the looks, he sent it 2nd class. 

Then it's on him. Only if/when the shipment is marked as "delivered" is it your problem.

Things do get lost within a PO parcel area. My local PO is a chaotic local grocery, with no secure area and they keep parcels in huge piles all over the place

TheBigDipper

ryanverbena said:

@goldtop ; I'm the buyer in this situation.

@lionaqualooper it was a £50 purchase.

By the looks, he sent it 2nd class. 

The sender of the parcel (the eBay seller) is the one who purchased the mail service and is the Royal Mail customer. The buyer has not received the goods and it's clearly still with Royal Mail. So, if I was the buyer, I'd raise a refund request with eBay and let the seller decide what he wants to do with Royal Mail - it's not the buyers problem. If by some miracle the item should turn up, the buyer should refuse to accept delivery and then Royal Mail will return it to the seller f.o.c. 

ryanverbena

The seller has become a little irate in the messaging, I can see he’s upset but I’ve been to the Royal Mail depot twice now and they haven’t helped. 

He posted this to me, either he is making this up or eBay seems to be siding with the seller. He hasn’t shown me proof of any correspondence with eBay.

ryanverbena

ryanverbena

As you can see, he seems very sure of himself that it’s my problem and not his.

LionAquaLooper

ryanverbena said:

The seller has become a little irate in the messaging, I can see he’s upset but I’ve been to the Royal Mail depot twice now and they haven’t helped. 

He posted this to me, either he is making this up or eBay seems to be siding with the seller. He hasn’t shown me proof of any correspondence with eBay.

No this is bollox, sorry.  The system is designed so that in situations like this, the buyer would get a refund from the seller  because the seller gets compensation from Royal Mail (or courier).  If he's saying he's contacted eBay then he's lying.  Either that or whoever he spoke to at eBay is a numpty.  I've spoken to eBay myself about this type of situation when it happened to me.  eBay will only side with the seller when the item has been delivered AND the case brought against the seller is "non-delivery".  Up to that point, the issue is between the sender and the delivery company.

Speak to eBay yourself if you really want it straight from the horse's mouth.  

ICBM

The legal responsibility is on the seller to deliver the goods purchased, end of. If he didn’t bother to use a fully tracked and insured postal service that’s his problem, not yours.

Open a case with Ebay for non-delivery and take it from there.

LionAquaLooper

ryanverbena said:

He's clearly hoping you're new to this and that he can bully you into folding by making it sound like he's the authority in this situation.  What a dick.  eBay are the authority in this little picture, not him.  

ryanverbena

Thank you all, wisdom all round. I was hoping this would be the case, will escalate and follow the eBay protocol. The general sentiment I'm getting is:     

JezWynd

It looks as though seller has been texting you. Don't correspond with the seller via any method other than eBay messaging. That way eBay will be able to see all your correspondence.

LionAquaLooper

JezWynd said:

It looks as though seller has been texting you. Don't correspond with the seller via any method other than eBay messaging. That way eBay will be able to see all your correspondence.

+1

Grangousier

It happened to me (twice!) around Christmas - As soon as it was clear the package had disappeared (in both cases they didn't seem to have left the dispatching post office) I got in touch with the seller and told them. In both cases they were understanding, if pissed off at the PO, and in both cases I reported the packages as undelivered and got my money back (for the item, if not the delivery). 

Also, in both cases, the sellers were in London. I'm just going to pick up in person if possible, in the future - the Post Office has dropped through the floor (we're down to about one delivery a week in Central London). 

TTony

To be fair, from the seller's perspective, it looks like he's done everything that he should have done - sent the item and used a tracked postal option all within eBay's process.

So - as he says - he thinks he's done all he could (which is more or less correct).  I don't think he's bullying particularly, but perhaps is being (understandably) a bit defensive and is ignorant of the actual liability and likely outcome of an eBay dispute.

Unfortunately, RM has not made the delivery, so they've not completed their part of the process.  He chose to use RM (and whatever level of insurance cover), not you.

You can chase RM but you can't do much more with RM as you have no contract with them and so you can't claim any compensation for non-delivery.

Your only option - which eBay will accept - is to raise a non-delivery claim via eBay.  The seller then has to refund you, and the seller has to make the claim against RM which they'll have to pay out (to the extent of whatever cover he paid for with the service) unless they can prove delivery.

If he paid for sufficient insurance cover, then he shouldn't be out of pocket - although he'll have the hassle and delay of making the claim against RM.

steer

Isn't this a simple case of reporting to ebay that you have not received the item, and you then get a full refund from the seller via the automated ebay refund system? That happens a lot, and my experience is that it is usually resolved in the buyers favour quite quickly. 

The only unusual thing here is that there is proof of postage, but not of delivery, and the unpleasant misleading aggressive and threatening messages that you have received from the seller.