In a quandary - no response from buyer

[5129frederick]

I'm in a bit of a quandary and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Back on the nineth a buyer outbid four other people to win a 1000 piece circular fairies puzzle and paid for it immediately.  I then checked it as a matter of course before repacking it and found to my horror there was one piece missing.  At the same time a 500 piece circular fairies puzzle contained 501 pieces, both bought from the same shop.  Obviously both puzzles belonged to the same person who, I surmise found one piece on the floor while boxing it up and put it - in error into the wrong box.  The backs of both puzzles are identical.  I panicked and had everybody up at 7a.m. trying, in vain to do a 500 piece puzzle.  In the end I gave it up as a lost cause - you wouldn't believe just how difficult these circular abstract puzzles are!  To cut a long story short I contacted the buyer of the 500 piece puzzle who said "No problem - when I come across it I'll post it back to you."  I immediately sent off an email to this other woman explaining the situation asking her whether she still wanted the puzzle, whether she wanted a partial refund or what?  That was nearly five days ago.  Despite two more emails I have had absolutely no response.  I would have thought she would have responded immediately, if nothing else, to call me a fool..

 No way am I going to post her the jigsaw for her to then say she doesn't want it.   If she doesn't want it I'll then give her a full refund and then put it up as a second option - something I have never done, but why the hell is she not responding?!    This woman is holding me over a barrel!  I can't do anything until she replies!  What doesn't make sense is I've got her money.  If the situation was reversed, I'd reply immediately. 

[aernethril]

When that happened to me - found the count was over the 1000 after several attempts, I just gave up and stayed up all night and then carried on after a couple of hours sleep, putting the wretched thing back together - and yes, it did have more than 1000 pieces - go figure!!!

You could try to phone  your buyer - she may not be getting your messages if she hasn't checked her email account (or it's expired) and she's not logged into her eBay account.

If she doesn't respond or you cannot get anywhere, you will have to take a decision and either send it with a grovelling note to say that you'll try to recover the missing piece and forward it on, or you'll have to refund and take the defect and hope she doesn't leave adverse feedback too.

I think refunding would be the better option because it could be months before your other buyer gets back in touch to say they've (not) found the missing piece, if they ever do.

[5129frederick]

Thank you for your reply.

I am a connoisseur of quality puzzles - namely Ravensburger, Clementoni, Gibson and, to a lesser degree, Falcon.  All these puzzles are top quality - the creme de la creme, and they all contain 1008 pieces but for ease of phonetics the makers downgrade them to a 1000 piece jigsaws.  When I talk of quality, I really do mean it - you should be able to pick up a Ravensburger almost by it's edge without it falling to pieces.  I tend to specialise in puzzles - I have, at any one time, somewhere in the region of 160 of them although obviously not all Ravensburgers.  I do some, but in the majority of cases just count the pieces.  If I come across a Ravensburger with 1006 pieces I'll dump it, because it'll mean there are two pieces missing.  Nobody in their right mind would deliberately sell a puzzle like that, but in this case the puzzle pieces were very neatly bagged up so I didn't pay too much attention to it.  

The woman has left no phone number - not a lot of people do, and I can't give her my email address because there's an automatic block on anyone who tries togive details over the phone - security.  Rubbish, but there you go.  I will write to her telling of my attempts to contack her and tell her if she doesn't contact me within a week I will automatically give her a full refund and the offer it up as second option - like I said, it's doing my head in!  Again, thank you for the advice.  Fred.

[aernethril]

Well, Fred, you may be a connoisseur of puzzles, but you don't seem to have the ability to solve this one or to know how eBay works.

First, you request her contact details via eBay - and get her phone number that way. 

Go to Advanced Search and on the left hand side, click on Contact a Member.  That way you'll know if ever you need to do it again.

If she has not got a phone number registered with eBay or it is no longer recognised, then you have the option to report her for invalid/incomplete contact details although that may well not help immdediately.

As for giving her your email address, well, her email address will be on the Sold email you should have received and if you've binned that beyond recovery, it will be the Paypal transaction.

So you can email her directly that way.

There's no block that I know of to give any details over a phone call, so I guess you got a bit muddled at that point.

Not sure why you'd want to offer it up as a second option after refunding - I'm not quite with you on that bit - unless you mean you're going to attempt to make it again and see if they are really all there.

I guess, if you're just reselling jigsaws and not necessarily buying them for your own pleasure and use first of all, then there's more than one risk you take with that.

[5129frederick]

I did go into advanced search.  She's on the system but she hasn't displayed her telephone number.  When I press "contact" all I get is her email address.  When I go into sold items and press view invoice details I get her address but no phone number, the same as with Paypall account which shows when she paid for it.  For the record she has no items for sale but feedback of slightly over 250.  The  reason I want to offer it up as a second option is because you can do that without relisting if there have been multiple offers, as in this case.  Nowhere has she left a contact telephone number, only a full postal address  or email address.  Few people add their telephone number.  Somebody - a friend, asked me for my home email address so they could send me money through "Pay a friend".  It was immediately blocked for "security reasons"  It's a recent thing from eBay.  As I said in my earlier post, I am getting no response from her - she is not replying to my emails.    

The long and the short of it is I've sent her a Recorded Delivery letter asking her to confirm she still wants it, giving her my non ebay email address and my mobile phone number.  If she hasn't responded by this time next week I'll just giver her a refund and use the second option.  Maybe her system is down.

[5129frederick]

I've just found out why she didn't put her contact phone number - tried 118 118 - she's ex-directory  Doh!  I can't understand why people do that! 

[aernethril]

Then you can report her for not having her telephone number in her eBay details.

Ex directory or not, we're supposed to have a valid working phone number registered with eBay.

[5129frederick]

I think I'll stick to selling collectors plates - it's easier!

[bitsnknots]

Fred, our landline is ex-directory for reasons I won't go into.  There are many reasons why people opt for this.  

[5129frederick]

Very annoying for people who choose to go ex-directory, they have to actually pay for the privilege.  There's not a lot in it, but it's still more.  It should be the other way round, that you should have to pay to have your name in a phone book - that would be a legitimate fee helping pay the cost of printing the telephone directories with your name on but to charge you for them to do nothing - that's hard to swallow!  I've no qualms about people seeing my name in the phone book, but like you, we too are ex-directory.  Done just to keep my wife happy.

[ginap.123]

I'm ex directory and didn't pay

[bitsnknots]

And I don't pay for ex-directory either.

[shonafp]

i don't pay either.

[1311rose]

I'm ex-dir and I did not pay

[harrydog10]

I have never heard of anybody paying extra to be Ex-Directory.  In fact I would be looking for an alternative Telephone supplier if they wanted to charge me.

[leoleoleo123]

I would have just refunded, with an apology...