Insufficient postage on purchase - who is responsible

[2007gracer]

Purchased and paid for item, including £4 postage.  Received card from Royal Mail - cannot deliver item as sender did not pay full postage.

Payment due was £3.  Paid Royal Mail, via PayPal and item delivered today.

Seller is stating did pay and has receipt for £3 postage on my package.  Showed photo of receipt.  Has suggested I take copies of these to my 

post officce as should not have been charged.  Said would send me originals if necessary.

I am left feeling this should not be up to me to try to get the £3 paid back.  I live in a rural area with no buses, (am in my 70's) . Suggested

to seller she take the scan of packaging, clearly showing no postage to her post office to resolve.  Also, feel I should be refunded the £3 by seller

as this was not my problem.

Am I wrong?  How should I proceed.  So far nothing back from seller.

Thanks so much.

Grace

[red_magpie · Accepted solution]

It happens quite often that buyers are asked to pay some form of underpaid postage surcharge.

Sometimes Royal Mail doesn't accept the postage charged by the seller's post office. Other times the stamps have simply come off.

Your choice is to pay the surcharge, or refuse to accept the parcel.

If you don't accept it, the parcel will be returned to the seller. You can open an item not received under eBay's money back guarantee.

If you pay the surcharge, and send the seller the receipt, a good seller will refund you, and sort it out themselves with the post office. However, some sellers won't take any responsibility.

I'm afraid that was the risk you took. EBay won't get involved in postal cost.

[john1297576]

You should not have paid,hen it would have beenreturned to the seller and he would have had to sort out. Now that you have paid there is no process to get it refunded.

Only person who can make a claim is the seller, he has proof of paying postage, you have receipt for paying excess postage.

In my opinion there is very little point in anyone raising the matter with the Post Office, it has to be dealt with by the seller and Royal Mail. The seller has no incentive to get involved now as he is not the one out of pocket.

[2007gracer]

Thank you so much for these. Have now received a message from Seller, who does appear to feel it was up to me to resolve with my post office, stating this is apparently what Ebay feels - that it is up to recipient to resolve. However, she has now refunded me the £3. If it ever happens again, I would definitely let the item be returned to seller, though in this case there was no return address on package! Really appreciate your speedy replies and help here.