My question is who pays the refunds on items not received?
I recently purchased an item wich I did not realise was from Canada
I purchased the item on Oct 4 up to this date 13 Nov I have not received it
Upon enquiring about item not received I said to the seller that I wanted the item and as I had slow shipping from Canada before I was prepared to wait and see if it turned up seller replied that it had been sent airmail
This was sent last night .
This morning I received an E Mail from eBay that a refund had been made .
What happens now if I get the item I will have to go back to the seller and pay the money back wich is a hassle
This happened to me a few years ago when I tried to pay the seller again he had blocked me and there was no way to contact him
As I had not requested a refund did eBay jump the gun or did the seller give it to me
Piko

I'm not entirely sure how it works on the seller side but I believe if ebay's refund policy time period is getting close and there is no evidence of tracking or delivery than a refund is issued.

If a seller wishes to continue being a seller I would think ebay adds the refund costs to their monthly operation bill.

This is why we are seeing $20 international shipping fees for a stupid card.

In the very small amount of cases where the card showed up after the refund I just paid the seller. If they blocked me then they lost a customer. It's not like I'm running a crime spree of reporting non deliveries so I can get refunds.

I believe a seller has to provide eBay with a Bank account now. So whenever you reach some trigger benchmark eBay just automatically processes a transaction to the Bank account. The seller can fight it out with them if they dispute anything.

I'm not sure a buyer can even waive the refund if they want to wait it out, but know that if you do and the item never comes, the time period to make a claim will have passed and you will be out your money.

Was the item sent using a tracked service? If it isn't and it's standard mail then ebay won't know if you've received the item and nor will the seller.
If they've refunded you, then they would appear to be content to refund you and chase up a postage refund themselves.
You can try to contact them if the item does eventually show up, but if you can't contact them then you can't do more about it.
If it's tracked that's another matter, but again, if you're unable to contact them it's not your fault.

Is it my imagination, or are you having a terrible run of bad luck with postage these past couple of months? Hope that luck changes for you.
No international postage is that great these days, (currently the sluggishness of USPS make Royal Mail look fantastic ), and the next month or so will be worse with the Christmas overload....well, that's the excuse that will be used, no doubt.

I think you're going to receive the item. It's just going to take more time. USPS is even slower than usual now and it's going to get slower in the next few weeks as HW noted.

This is why some US sellers don't ship overseas anymore. A buyer has to apply for a refund within 21 days of payment or risk not being able to get it. If the item doesn't arrive within 14 days, a buyer often gets nervous and contacts Ebay. At that point, Ebay might grant the refund right away rather than wait a few more days for notice from the buyer. Sometimes, a package arrives in about a week but it has often taken 3-4 weeks and that was before COVID and the added slowdown. The seller is then out the money and the item. Imagine that hassle.

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
My question is who pays the refunds on items not received?
I recently purchased an item wich I did not realise was from Canada
I purchased the item on Oct 4 up to this date 13 Nov I have not received it
Upon enquiring about item not received I said to the seller that I wanted the item and as I had slow shipping from Canada before I was prepared to wait and see if it turned up seller replied that it had been sent airmail
This was sent last night .
This morning I received an E Mail from eBay that a refund had been made .
What happens now if I get the item I will have to go back to the seller and pay the money back wich is a hassle
This happened to me a few years ago when I tried to pay the seller again he had blocked me and there was no way to contact him
As I had not requested a refund did eBay jump the gun or did the seller give it to me
Piko

This is why I NEVER sell anything outside the USA on E-Bay anymore.
It's hard enough just to LIST an item now with all their new particulars.
As for the USPS, I live about 45 miles away from a certain small press publisher. Every time I buy a book from them, it is shipped south out of state, then north, then to my local post office, a distance of 360 miles. Even my mail lady can't understand why they do that. I know they use their established mail routes, but it still seems like an enormous waste of time and manpower (or peoplepower, if you prefer).

Yeah, it used to be easy to list an item but now it's a tangle of boxes to fill out, and an hour later (or more) when you think you're done, you get a message that says you did something wrong. There's no obvious way to select "free shipping." You have to poke around to find that. My brother learned that when he wanted to list some stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by cardaddict:
This is why I NEVER sell anything outside the USA on E-Bay anymore.
It's hard enough just to LIST an item now with all their new particulars.
As for the USPS, I live about 45 miles away from a certain small press publisher. Every time I buy a book from them, it is shipped south out of state, then north, then to my local post office, a distance of 360 miles. Even my mail lady can't understand why they do that. I know they use their established mail routes, but it still seems like an enormous waste of time and manpower (or peoplepower, if you prefer).

Related to this topic...Last month, I bought an item and the seller said he sent it. After several days, I hadn't received it so I contacted him. He said he didn't go through Ebay's shipping program and didn't get a tracking number.

I waited another week with no package having arrived and told him I would have to talk to Ebay about it. Ebay couldn't get tracking info from him and issued me a refund.

A few days after that, the post office left me a notice that a package was waiting for me with postage due (envelope too thick - too many cards inside - for the postage that was paid). I paid the $4 because I wanted those cards (had heard about them a few years ago but hadn't seen them for sale). I messaged Ebay and the buyer that I received the cards and wanted to repay him - minus the 4 bucks of course (included a scan of the envelope with the "postage due" stamp and the receipt). The buyer said his post office measured the envelope and charged him accordingly. He said he'd get back to me but that was a month ago now.

Something is going wrong with these tracked packages and I feel sorry for eBay sellers that have to deal with this stuff regularly, as a strange transaction just happened to me, and it has not yet been explained or fully resolved.

I bought some cards from a seller I used before. In a few days I got the tracking number and the PO started to document its course as normal. I got a delivery date. It came and went. The tracking info changed to returned to sender. I tried to contact the seller. Then I got another date from tracking. It came and went. Then the tracking said it was undeliverable, but available for pickup. No one ever tried to deliver it, that much I knew. So I went to my PO with the tracking number, and they said it was still at the distribution center and can't be picked up. Then the tracking system said there was an alert on the package.

Because weeks had already passed, I reported the non-receipt to eBay and the seller. The seller couldn't get the PO to explain why the package couldn't be delivered. In the end all he could do was request the return and agree to rebate all the money.

Now the seller has to wait to get the cards back and I'm waiting for all my refunds. I believe the seller acted in good faith. It is possible that the label or the package was damaged. I assume postage was not the issue, but I have no idea why the distribution center never sent it to my local PO for delivery. I don't know what an alert on a tracked package means and the data never said why either.

If I ever find out I'll post the reason, as this is very curious and has never happened to me before. The seller also said he has never had it happen before.

Yeah, how could it be both "undeliverable" and available for pick-up? Is it both "lost" and "found?"

At the moment I'm waiting for a package from Germany that was sent out almost three weeks ago. In the past it has taken about a week to get something from Europe by airmail. I've even received a box from Switzerland sent on a Friday that arrived the following Monday.

Anyway, it does have tracking, and according to that it was still in Germany almost two weeks after it was mailed. Then it was in England for a few days but it's somewhere in the U.S. now. I don't get updates everyday. It just catches up after a few to several days. Weird.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
Yeah, how could it be both "undeliverable" and available for pick-up? Is it both "lost" and "found?" Weird.

Exactly, the updates kept changing and saying opposite things. It was out for delivery on two separate dates when it never reached my local PO. It was marked return to sender twice, but it didn't leave NY. Once it was available for pick up, didn't say where and then it started saying that there was a problem, and it added an alert that it didn't explain.

I didn't know when to report non-receipt to eBay because the updates kept sounding like it was being processed and would arrive any day.

It still doesn't say where it is now, just says going to next destination. The seller requested that it be returned, so I hope it's on its way back to him. Wouldn't like him to lose the cards too, but I can't be on the hook for something I'm not getting. I would like to know what was wrong with the package, but as the addressee, they don't have to tell me anything and only the sender can file a claim. I may never find out what happened.

I lost a good card that way not by the post office but E Bay shipping or was it a combination of both
I purchased a card from a UK company it was posted do not know if tracking was done.
E Bay gave a delivery date of 16 days then changed it to 28 days then changed it to approx 2 months .
I never received the card upon enquiry I was told not to enquire until after the due delivery date .
however that came and went no card.
After the delivery date had passed I had not received the card
However I did receive a E Mail from E Bay asking if I enjoyed my new card
Upon informing them I had not received my card there was dead silence from them and i have never heard about it from them since
And I still have not got the card or a refund although I had informed the seller that I had not received it.
I think a combination of covid and the UK post Office hack had something to do with it.

Just to end the story of my blocked eBay package, it must have been returned to the seller because the cards were posted again and I was able to buy most of them. The seller never contacted me, so I still don't know why the Post Office refused to delivery beyond the regional center. Now here is my question to any eBay sellers reading this.

I receive numerous orders from eBay sellers that all have tracking numbers, are delivered by USPS and left at the door with an email notification of delivery. There is no signing for the package. Other than this particular one that I believe was either the PO's fault or the seller's label, I have had zero problems.

When I received the cards the second time around, it required a signature. I was home so no problem, but if I wasn't I would have to wait for it again or go to the PO for pickup myself. This is not something I want to do.

So the question is, was this normal or was it the seller 's decision to require a signature? Do you require signatures at delivery from everybody or is this optional to eBay delivery?

It's simple for me, even though I like this seller and don't fault them for the return, I am not signing for packages. If that is a requirement, I will buy from someone else. Isn't that the whole point of having tracking numbers, to ensure delivery has been made?

I believe that eBay sellers have a right to protect their sales since they can get the short stick with buyer protection. However if you make it too difficult for regular good customers to do business with you, don't be surprised when they don't return.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Just to end the story of my blocked eBay package, it must have been returned to the seller because the cards were posted again and I was able to buy most of them. The seller never contacted me, so I still don't know why the Post Office refused to delivery beyond the regional center. Now here is my question to any eBay sellers reading this.

I receive numerous orders from eBay sellers that all have tracking numbers, are delivered by USPS and left at the door with an email notification of delivery. There is no signing for the package. Other than this particular one that I believe was either the PO's fault or the seller's label, I have had zero problems.

When I received the cards the second time around, it required a signature. I was home so no problem, but if I wasn't I would have to wait for it again or go to the PO for pickup myself. This is not something I want to do.

So the question is, was this normal or was it the seller 's decision to require a signature? Do you require signatures at delivery from everybody or is this optional to eBay delivery?

It's simple for me, even though I like this seller and don't fault them for the return, I am not signing for packages. If that is a requirement, I will buy from someone else. Isn't that the whole point of having tracking numbers, to ensure delivery has been made?

I believe that eBay sellers have a right to protect their sales since they can get the short stick with buyer protection. However if you make it too difficult for regular good customers to do business with you, don't be surprised when they don't return.

As a seller and buyer...it is my understanding that it is the senders choice to require a signature. Whenever I mail a parcel the mail clerk asks me if I want to require a signature on the receiving end. I'm assuming that if it was the same sender he sent it requiring a sig because of previous issues. It would of been nice if the sender would of communicated this with you.

quote:

Originally posted by spidergoblin:
As a seller and buyer...it is my understanding that it is the senders choice to require a signature. Whenever I mail a parcel the mail clerk asks me if I want to require a signature on the receiving end. I'm assuming that if it was the same sender he sent it requiring a sig because of previous issues. It would of been nice if the sender would of communicated this with you.

Thank you, that was the exact assumption I took from it. As I have bought from that seller several times before and my long record with many others is unblemished, he made a mistake I won't let happen again.