Overseas purchase

[bigstevemg]

Hi there,

I purchased a pair of secondhand “waterproof boots” from USA and ended up paying more for the postage and taxes than the boots. The boots ended up to not be waterproof as advertised and the seller just said to refer to EBay.

if I asked for EBay to get involved to return the boots, would I be left with the cost of postage and taxes?

[**peaseblossom**]

eBay cannot enforce the payment of return postage by overseas sellers.    You could resell them as long as you don't call them waterproof.

If you do decide to return them you can apply to get the import duty refunded.   See: "If you’re charged too much or return your goods" on here:

https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty

[bigstevemg]

Helpful, thank you. Couldn’t find anything on eBay to advise.

I might just keep and try to proof them I guess, not worth the hassle and a lesson learned.

Sent from my iPad

[red_magpie]

eBay cannot enforce the payment of return postage by overseas sellers.

That's not what an eBay rep (Kat or Kate, I think) posted here:

Now if a seller is based outside of the UK, lets use China as the example, and the item is sent from China it is still the sellers' responsibility to provide means of return to the buyer if it's a not as described case.

This should be a label or payment for the buyer to send the item back. If the seller does not provide means of return within the seller make it right period the buyer can reach out to our teams and we escalate the case. What normally would happen here is that the agent will send the seller a warning that they have 5 days to provide means of return or we will close the case in the buyer's favour.

A seller can buy an international label (direct through a courier) and provide it to the buyer or the monetary value to send the item back if the buyer is willing to physically go buy the label.

Certainly the same has applied in reverse; UK sellers have been required to arrange and pay for international returns from the US and Europe. Some have found - especially where the buyer has refused cooperation - that the difficulty and cost wasn't worthwhile. So the buyer kept their items for nothng, which is probably what they hoped for.

[**peaseblossom**]

That's good news.   Unfortunately one way or another some buyers are not getting this result but hopefully things will improve.   Thanks for letting me know.  🙂