Item stuck at mail centre Royal Mail

[tranceenthusiast]

Hi all,

Fairly new to selling, so far have had no problems.

I've shipped all my items within an hour of purchase. With labels purchased via eBay.

Item dispatched last Friday from Hampshire to an address in Wales.

The tracking is showing the item at Swansea MC since Saturday morning. Today is my finally expected delivery date. 

I'm reading that if buyer requests, I have to send a refund or eBay will punish me and give him a refund from my account anyway. 

So my question is, If the item does not arrive today, What is the best course of action here?

Although the item is not expensive, I do not want to be in a situation where I have refunded and then suddenly Royal Mail deliver the item leaving me with no compensation and the buyer with my item for free. 

Contacting RM is impossible nowadays. 

 Hopefully someone can put my mind at rest here. 

Many thanks in advance.

(considering pulling my other items is this more hassle than it's worth?)

[tranceenthusiast]

Cheers for this info. 

[tressygirl]

Sorry @tranceenthusiast  I had a read of your other post  and as I don't sell large items , or  ever used ParcelForce,   and I buy postage over the counter,  I don't use eBay's postage,  I cannot help you much with your other question.  It is still open,   hopefully someone will come along with the answers.

Personally, as it is such a large item,   when listing I would list it as collection only.  This removes the headache of packing it especially if you only now can bubble wrap it. 

On your listing,  ask for a preference of cash on collection after purchase, this then excludes the buyer from opening any item not as described cases later.

It does reduce your field of buyers,  true,  but it also reduces  packing which will probably cost a fair penny, and a high postage charge ,which often puts buyers off.

[tranceenthusiast]

Thanks for this  @tressygirl . I may well do what you suggest with that one then.

[tressygirl]

That would be my personal choice, again less stress for you,  the seller.

@tranceenthusiast 

[tranceenthusiast]

Great advice as always my teacher. 😉

[tressygirl]

Well,  you're very welcome.

[leon9503]

Just to add for more FYI:

Did you know that if you pay for Next Day delivery (or whatever service) by the PO and it takes longer, you can claim money back on the Postage as they've not honoured the service, doesn't matter what the reason is as that's not your problem.

And forgot to add to my last reply, it's not always EB's fault, it's just human nature to blame the main point of contact, it's the extremely poor delivery services that cause a lot of the issues because they don't do things properly, don't forget, IIRC some of the delivery drivers get paid peanuts and try and do as many as possible and we all know that saying....Pay peanuts get....The main reason I've stopped using Evri is because the Insurance covers hardly anything I post and I shouldn't need to jump through hoops to get a refund.

To go a little deeper, it's also the decline of Customer Service and part of an indication of the collapse of simple services as it's nationwide and not local, as big as EB looks on paper, it's not, it's become an Ad revenue service like Amazon and will one day collapse under it's own bad management and greed.

I only really buy from a lot of the same sellers these days as most of what I look to purchase is overpriced junk and more expensive on some occasion than the retailer direct!

It's just snippets like this that might help and always better to be armed with info