Hello to everybody
I would like to share my experience and ask if anyone else has dealt with a similar situation.
I purchased a very large bundle of fragile tableware (paid 425£ for 36 pieces), and unfortunately, one of the large items arrived damaged. From the beginning, I only asked for either:
- a replacement of the damaged item, or
- a reasonable partial refund
I clearly explained that I wanted to keep the rest of the bundle because everything else arrived safely.
However, Customer Service advised me to open a return case, saying this was the only way to arrange a replacement or partial refund. Once the case was opened, the seller approved a full return instead, and suddenly the process turned into returning the entire order.
The biggest issue is that technically I never even saw any official partial refund offer in the case page. The seller later claimed he offered £8 compensation, but due to app/message problems on my phone, I could not properly see the messages or any option to accept/negotiate this offer. I was only seeing instructions to prepare the whole order for return.
Now I am expected to return a huge fragile bundle, and I can currently see only one return label, which is impossible for safely packing everything into one box (originally, the seller posted it in two huge boxes and by ebay policy I have to send items back in the same condition and packing as received).
This is a huge bundle of fragile tableware, and one item already arrived broken due to insufficient packaging. Now I’m expected to repack the entire collection safely and return everything in the same condition it was received.
Realistically, carefully wrapping and protecting dozens of fragile items will take me at least half a day of work, not including sourcing extra packing materials and transporting the parcels. And if anything gets damaged during the return because of inadequate labels or packaging limitations, I’m worried the responsibility could still fall on me.
Honestly, I’m very unhappy with how this was handled. Returning an entire large fragile collection because of one damaged item feels unreasonable, especially when I originally requested a simple partial refund or replacement. Who compensates the buyer for all this time, stress, and work when the original issue was just one damaged item that could have been resolved with a simple replacement or partial refund?
At this point, it honestly feels as though the process was made unnecessarily complicated from the beginning, almost as if the expectation was that the buyer would eventually give up because returning such a large fragile bundle is extremely difficult and time-consuming.
I originally requested a very simple solution for one damaged item — either a replacement or a partial refund. Instead, the situation escalated into a full return process involving repacking dozens of fragile items, arranging transport, and spending hours of personal time.
Considering that I never properly saw the alleged £8 offer in the case system itself due to technical/app communication issues (!?), the whole experience has felt confusing, exhausting, and unfair as a buyer.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Were you able to resolve it without returning the whole order?
UPD:
Luckily, I had enough time and patience to contact Customer Service again and insist on clarification regarding the compensation. Otherwise, I would never even have known that the seller supposedly offered £8 compensation, because this offer was never officially visible to me on the case page in the app.
The technical issues with the messaging system made communication extremely confusing, and I was only seeing instructions to return the entire order instead of any clear option to accept or negotiate a partial refund.
