Item lost nightmare please help

[geoffshultz]

 Hi

I sold an item on fifth of April via eBay GSP to a man in Germany.

He paid the winning price of the item, the requested insured shipping costs to eBay GSP  hub  and import tax or customs duty of about £60.

eBay who no longer deal with PayPal managed the payment and sent me money less their fees a few days later.

 I thought Hermes would be able to deliver a package to the GSP hub without losing it sadly I was mistaken.

 The buyer contacted me to say they have not received the parcel and I instructed them to open an eBay dispute in the resolution centre. 

I entered into discussions with eBay and Hermes customer support and the conclusion is that it never left the UK and was lost  by Hermes on the way to the hub. 

 Eventually Hermes settled the full cost of the claim, in effect the final value of the item and the UK postage they had charged me. 

  I went into eBay to try and refund my buyer and found I was unable to do so as there was a dispute open. One hour of phone calls later and a lot of being put on hold I discovered that  instead of opening an eBay dispute he had opened a dispute with PayPal in Germany.

I cannot see the PayPal dispute in my PayPal account because my side of the transaction was not conducted by PayPal but done as an eBay managed payment.

 So his actions have created the perfect storm.

I cannot refund the buyer by eBay as there is a dispute open.

I cannot refund the buyer by PayPal as I have no record of the dispute despite talking to PayPal.

 The advice from PayPal is to get the buyer to close the dispute so that I can refund him via eBay  which will give me a credit on final value fees and selling fees.

 The buyer will not close the dispute as he says that is his guarantee and wants me to send a PayPal transfer for the full amount before he will close the dispute.

As I see this I will be  refunding a buyer outside of the system, unable to claim back my seller fees and also having to pay about £60 of import tax on an item that was never imported in fact it never left the UK.

Do I just have to suck this up or is there something I can do? I can’t make PayPal and eBay Help work this out.

Thanks in advance