I just had a bad ‘Item Not Received' experience and welcome any advice. So, I purchased an item from a private seller on eBay: a jacket, value c. £40.00 (so not a fortune in the scale of life) - order placed 27th June 2025. Evri were the nominated postal service. The item did not arrive at my address. Tracking though showed 'delivered to neighbour' and 'at 2b'. There is no '2b' anywhere in the vicinity of my house, nor indeed the village I live in, and no-one has come forth to drop the package/jacket off, as might be expected if it were left with a near neighbour, and calls on nearby neighbours were fruitless. I had a strong suspicion though, where the issue was, as I'll come on to...
I opened an 'item not received' case, and explained I had not received the item, had made local enquiries to no avail, and further, explained that we have a local ongoing issue whereby the Evri driver deposits a large number of packages destined for my village at any random address in the area. And it is then down to the benevolence of the receiving resident to disseminate the packages, possibly at up to a dozen addresses in the village, some distance apart. Such actions, in my opinion, can not be described as 'delivered to neighbour'. I itemised several incidents where we'd had people, who sometimes lived a couple of miles away from us , knocking on our door, dropping off packages addressed to us, but delivered to them, even though there was no similarity to our name or address other than that we live in the same village. The link was that these were always Evri-handled items. Our community website is awash with messages about similar issues, either people appealing to anyone who may have received an expected package, or others who had items not addressed to them.
eBay rejected my case, citing the tracking shows the 'item had been delivered', even though, as stated, the tracking showed the item had been left at a non-existent neighbour's address.
I appealed this case, and explained the term 'delivered' was stretched beyond credibility insofar as I do not know who it was delivered to, and have no way of finding out. My appeal too was rejected.
Evri will not converse with me, stating the seller is the party they have the contractual agreement with, and I should ask the seller to raise the issue. I have via eBay messaging asked the seller, who is the party who contracts with Evri, if he can assist me by contacting Evri and chase the delivery status, but he has rebuffed all communication with me.
I have considered taking county court action against the seller for failure to deliver the item (which seems perhaps unfair, but that is how the consumer act works) - and asked for eBay assistance in revealing the name/address of the seller - they have declined to do so, citing protection of customers and privacy..
I asked eBay, is this something that falls within the scope of their 'buyer protection' cover that I paid for when purchasing the item? Nope, they said it isn't.
So I am left with no item, no refund, no 'buyer protection' despite paying for it, no way of pursuing it with Evri (other than making a complaint about the driver which I'll doubtless do as an aside, though I anticipate this will be futile from past Evri experiences), and no means of taking county court action against the seller as I don't know their name or address and ebay won't reveal it.
I am, after 24 years of eBay use, feeling very disillusioned about their handling of this. If anyone knows where I can now go with this, then your advice would be appreciated. I paid by debit card to eBay, so credit card or PayPal claw-backs are not an option.
