Buyer claims non-receipt of an item seven months after dispatch

[uksar-iyfi2]

I have a buyer who claims to have not received an item which was posted 7 months ago. I only keep my post office receipts for 3 months and for some reason I haven't updated the tracking (I always do this normally). The buyer has contacted me directly for a refund but I know I sent the item any ideas what I can do about this?

[papso22]

You can send the buyer a polite reply and then ignore them, or just ignore them. They are too late to make a claim through ebay or their funding source. 

[tressygirl]

You need to do nothing, well, aside from sending a polite message back to the buyer to say  you are sorry the item was not received, but that they are well out of time to claim any refund from eBay.

They are also out of time to claim from their payment provider .

As a tip keep those proofs of posting for at least  6 months.   A buyer still just be in time to claim a refund through a chargeback with their payment provider.

@uksar-iyfi2 

[red_magpie]

You're lucky it is seven months. When buyers pay by PayPal they have up to 180 days (almost six months!) to claim a refund because their item hasn't arrived. Unless the seller can still provide tracking proof of delivery it means an automatic refund.

The worst thing about it is that if the item has genuinely not been delivered it's months too late for the seller to claim compensation from Royal Mail or any courier. Why does Payal not require buyers to report non-delivery sooner?