I dont know wether I can do this on the forum if not delete
Is there a way to get my E Mail address to a seller without going through E Bay or Google
As through E Bay it will not send my messages with E Mail addresses ? I really need to be able to contact some sellers that I have purchased cards from and can not get a message to them
Thank You
Piko

Hi Piko,

Did you save the packaging from the cards? If not, the seller and buyer addresses used to be included in the invoice and fine print of the transaction emails/messages so you can look through those.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
I dont know wether I can do this on the forum if not delete
Is there a way to get my E Mail address to a seller without going through E Bay or Google
As through E Bay it will not send my messages with E Mail addresses ? I really need to be able to contact some sellers that I have purchased cards from and can not get a message to them
Thank You
Piko

Will it not allow you to enter the address as words? So put ‘at’ instead of @ and ‘dot’ instead of .?

quote:

Originally posted by simon1978:
Will it not allow you to enter the address as words? So put ‘at’ instead of @ and ‘dot’ instead of .?

Nope, eBay checks for that sort of thing these days. They really, really do not want sellers and buyers talking to each other directly as that costs them sales or more to the point: Final Value Fees. I imagine that is one of the reasons they have cut Paypal out of the picture as that gave sellers an email address they could use to contact buyers. eBay like to insist on getting their 12.8-20% (depending on all the extras they now throw into the fees)

Absolutely, eBay wants to monitor any communications between buyer and seller under penalty of death, or at least account termination.

However many eBay card sellers have registered businesses and even brick and mortar locations and websites. You can see the basic location of the item. So for those sellers that have an actual name close to the business name and general area, you can get good Google results. Also the page "about store" can give you some clues sometimes.

eBay won't help you to connect, but you can ferret it out for some sellers. You do have to be careful how you approach it though, because the sellers may not be interested in hearing from random people either. Especially if your purpose is to "negotiate" items they have listed. That can be a no-no for lots of reasons.

All this is helpful here is a short story
1 I have not received the cards yet
2 I need the copies of the receipts so GST can be charged
3 N Z Post have what I did not know was a third party drop office in O
Oregon for shipping wich you have to send receipts too for GST
4Was sent E Mail saying Covid had stopped delivery
5 When I asked to be able to combine shipping was advised that they had sent me an E Mailabout this and as I had not replied the Ten parcels on my request had been destroyed
When I asked for a copy of my E Mail telling them to destroy the parcels they came back with we dont have to send you anything as you never answered the E Mail we destroyed them read the T&Cs
I E Mailed too n fro they came back with forward reciepts I forwarded the Receipts and another magic trick came up You have sent them in the wrong format
By this time the reciepts.
have vanished into the ether
Some of the destroyed parcels have been recovered but some quiet valuable cards have been lost
I am trying to get a couple of them to recover some cards that as I have complained are on hold until I can get the Receipts otherwise they will also be destroyed
I dont think that thet are members of the forum
I have advised USPS of this and once I can get some sort of order I am going to lay charges
Thanks for your help
Piko

This is very confusing. What do you mean by destroyed parcels ?

Since when does the post office (or anyone else) request your permission to destroy mail ? I don't get it.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
This is very confusing. What do you mean by destroyed parcels ?

Since when does the post office (or anyone else) request your permission to destroy mail ? I don't get it.

I don't understand a lot of what goes on with mail in other countries, and customs, and drop boxes, but they were probably returned to sender as "some of the destroyed parcels have been recovered" would be quite impossible.

i have tried everything but they tell me that they can not recover the parcels
And they have been destroyed
And if I can not get receipts for the other remaining ones the same will happen at the moment they are giving me time to try and get them
E Bay are no help they wont do anything
The parcels have not been returned to sender as they do not do that
I have to arrange a paid return lable from the sender and send it to them
All this for about Ten Dollars worth of tax it is only being pedantic
We are in another Covid lockdown now and there is notification of more delays from them
As I do not seem to be making any progress with them and as this is happening in the USA I am going to lay a complaint of mail theft with the USPS
We will then see how their T&Cs work
I have tried to explain that I am not a computer expert and am having trouble using their complicated system but they will not assist me
It is getting crazier as time goes on

This has been my experience of ebay. If you sell something, you post it off, the person gets it and everybody is happy. If you buy something you pay, the thing arrives and everybody is happy.

But...when ever any of this does not happen you end up wishing you had never started in the first place.

Piko, apologizes for an incorrect assumption, but I have never heard of the situation you are describing and I still don't know how you got in this predicament or even who it is you are dealing with. The COVID lockdown in New Zealand may be the root cause of the packages not going through, but the rest of it is stuff I have never heard about. I don't know that the USPS is supposed to operate in this manner, but the international mail rules may be different. A lockdown would only mean the mail must be held wherever it is to me.

However it is the practice of the Post Office to "return to sender" any letters or shipments that can't be delivered because of a bad address or insufficient postage. If there is no return address it may wind up in some dead letter office, but every country has abandoned property laws. They know who you are at least, so blanket destruction doesn't seem like a choice for them. Nor is it reasonable. Abandoned property would normally be auctioned off after a few years of not having any owner contact when legally handled. Tommy is right, no one asks permission to destroy mail. Who would give permission to destroy their property?

Also somebody is contacting you and has your email. Wouldn't that have to be provided by eBay? And why can't eBay arrange the contact with the sellers to get what info you need when the delivery isn't going through? Why are you talking about consolidating packages when the shipping should have already been paid? Is this some third party carrier handling the parcels? Wolfie is right. You let eBay deliver in the simplest manner, and if that means the shipping cost is too high, you don't do it.

I can certainly understand an enormous delay because of COVID shut down, but not destruction of packages and you can't recover a destroyed parcel. That's an oxymoron, so I don't know who is telling you that one. You should really hammer eBay over this, unless it some how left eBay channels. When you get to the bottom of this, please let us know. This is so weird, I am very curious to find out what happens. Lots of luck Piko.

I have to say I'm extremely confused about this situation. I've sent and received parcels to most areas of the world and have family spread around too, so parcels and carriers are fairly familiar to me along with various customs routines etc, but I've never heard of needing to get receipts and having parcels destroyed etc. If they need to charge tax then that's usually done when looking at the customs form on the package, you don't normally have to provide a receipt so they can then charge you. It should be done at the 'port' and need no input from the recipient, nor sender, usually.

One thing that crosses my mind, is are you sure this isn't some scam?
This sounds a bit similar to a Royal Mail scam email/texts that was going around several months ago about having a parcel ready to deliver and needing either customs paid or some other fee, when they really want your money and details and are nothing to do with Royal Mail. If you've bought from ebay then it should be covered by ebay.

If it's not a scam then it really is a situation I've never come across before.

I'm also very confused. . . Can't you just get receipts either from eBay's purchase history, Paypal history, eBay emails or Paypal emails? I'm not sure what else you could need to provide that wouldn't be in one of those.

quote:

Originally posted by Hedgehog Witch:
One thing that crosses my mind, is are you sure this isn't some scam?

I thought of that too, but I'm not familiar with the nuances of international mail. I would hope verification would be the first step before all else. The destroying parcels part is very fishy for anyone to say when the owner is known.

Regarding this issue about Five years ago N Z Post set up a system wich buyers could use to get goods shipped from other countries to N Z this gave me access to sellers who would not sell to international buyers also there was a system were you could accunulate parcels and combine up to 10 at a great discount
This worked well until in 2019 the Govt decided to charge GST on all international purchases NZ post was to collect this GST for the Govt
The system that they sey up was so confusing it was very hard to use for non computer savvy people like me
Initially I got a computer nerd to do this for me when I had enough parcels to combine
Then Covid hit and I was notified that You Shop would be delaying servises in shipping etc
During this I had accunulated about 18 parcels and was not really concerned I had not had any E Mails from them I made a trip to the nearest Tax Office to see if there was a way to be able to pay this tax and was told they were not interestedand it as it was a third party and it was in N Z Posts court
I then went into my You Shop account to sort out what i was going to get my computer nerd to do for me and sat in small print these parcels disposed of at your request
Then the proverbial hit the fan
When asked to provide the E MAils were they had E mailed me and the one that I had sent telling them to dispose of the parcels there was no reply upon asking again they said that as I had not replied to their E Mail this gave them the right to dispose of the parcels and to read their T&Cs
after much too and froing they told me to forward the receipts for these parcel to them
wich i did they came back with I had sent them in the wrong format and to resubmit them
I went to my computer geek and it took him about two hours to sort it out
I then went back to them and tried to clear things up
There were still the ten parcels disposed of but they had some of them back on the list so I combined all of the parcels into two lots paid for them and waited
Meanwhile I rand them about the missing other ones and were they availale we will get back to you
They got back with a no the parcels had been destroyed
When I got the combined parcels that they sent me there were two missing I then had to send Photos of all the envelopes and packaging wich I have done and am still waiting for a resolution on this matter
On enquiring about the three parcels that I did not have copies of receipts for but had been sent to them when once forwarded seemed to disappear from my records I asked them to Return them to the senders we do not return you have to get the seller to send you a return label then forward it to us
This is were I am trying to find out if there is a way to get a sellers E Mail address as E Bay will not allow addresses to be sent and the only contact i have with them is through E Bay as a buyer
I now seem to be dealing with two entities N Z Post and their You Shop and getting E Mails mixed up between them they are both giving me conflicting info so if I can not get this. sorted soon I am going to lay a complaint against You Shop as they have destroyed the parcels and they are a USA based outfit with the USPS and also NZ Post here in N Z as they are also complicant in this matter
There might be things that I have not done but in my mind they can not arbitraitly dispose of mail that they know and have the address of and like all other postal systems if it can not be deliverd be returned to sender

Sounds like a law suit Piko. Maybe even a class action suit if other customers had parcels go missing or destroyed. Never heard of You Shop, so I guess that's why the situation seemed strange to many of us.

I'm still really not buying that destroyed part, even if that's the rules. Human nature says that they would peek and keep. But either way, it's personal property that should only be forfeited if you won't pay for it in my book. Lots of luck sorting it out.

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
I am going to lay a complaint against You Shop as they have destroyed the parcels and they are a USA based outfit with the USPS

Based on information on the YouShop website as well as their instructional video it seems this statement is not accurate.

It seems that YouShop is either part of, or very closely affiliated with NZ Post. There is no reference in any of the websites/videos to USPS.

Here is the link for YouShop, as you can see the site is actually part of the nzpost website.

https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/youshop

I'm not sure how helpful this information is, but it may help focus your energy at the proper company.

Hi Piko,

Here in the U.S., various local TV stations have a "consumer affairs" or "consumer reports" representative on the news team who can be contacted when people run into weird situations like this. All over the world, there is always some reason why the average person can't get the stuff they paid for from the company/entity/person that got paid. If one of your local TV stations also has someone whose job is to investigate and intercede, you might get some justice that way. It's funny how companies suddenly become more helpful when there's a camera and microphone in their lobby and their name is blasted in an unfavorable light.

Jess

Thank you all for your advice
To Webjohn
That is how I understood it to be but when i went to the Tax dept they were not interested in my attempts to be arrange another form of payment and to;d me that it was a third party office
My computer geek confirmed that after having to sort it out I have not asked them that question directly maby I should
As it is a US firm accepting mail for forwarding as it is U S mail and still under the auspices of the US postal system should I not be able to complain to USPS

quote:

As it is a US firm accepting mail for forwarding as it is U S mail and still under the auspices of the US postal system should I not be able to complain to USPS

Actually, No.

The USPS's responsibility ends when they deliver it to the address you sent it to. Once there, it is out of their hands.

No different really than sending to a friend in the US to forward to you. The USPS is only responsible for getting the package from the seller to your friend. Just in this case, the friend is a business charging you for the forwarding.

It gets really messy with foreign taxes and duties. As I think you are finding out.

Ed