Hi all,
I'm having an ongoing issue with a buyer in another country and I'm looking for some advice if possible please.
I'm based in the UK and a buyer from Canada made a best offer on one of my items. I accepted and they paid straight away, but then sent a message asking why the postage was so high. I explained the international postage price was set by Ebay GSP and out of my control. I offered to cancel the order if the postage was too high for them. They confirmed it was high (more or less the same price as the item) but they were OK with it as they wanted the item.
Fast forward to the item being delivered and I receive a message from the buyer saying I had only paid £4.99 postage to ship it to them and demanding I refund the difference in postage as I'd lied about the cost. I tried again to explain that the International side of the shipping was handled, charged and collected by Ebay, and the postage sticker was the domestic postage from my post office to the Ebay GSP centre before it was shipped to him. The buyer refused my explanation, accused me of breaking Ebay Terms of service and fraud and threatened to get Ebay involved if I didn't refund him. I explained the sticker was a Royal Mail GB sticker to Ebay's GSP centre, it didn't say international, mention Canada and had the post code of the centre's address at the bottom, but as he clearly didn't believe me he was welcome to ask Ebay for clarification.
The buyer opened an item return case against me as "Doesn't match description or photos". The comments, again, accused me of fraud and stated I only paid £4.99 to ship it from the UK to Canada. I called Customer Services for advice a couple of times over the next few days trying to get some advice on the best way to handle the situation. Customer Services were very helpful and told me I hadn't done anything wrong with the shipping. They advised me to message back within the Returns case to explain my side of things and if the buyer hadn't closed the case after the allotted time I should raise it with Ebay for investigation.
Ebay then investigated and found in the buyers favour as they couldn't determine the condition of the item the buyer received and I needed to arrange and pay for return shipping from Canada. I called customer services again as I was now at a loss as to what to do. Again, they were very helpful and said that as I hadn't done anything incorrect Ebay would cover the return shipping through the Global Shipping Program but I should message the buyer to explain a breakdown of the shipping costs (as a last ditch effort to get them to understand) and to confirm if they wanted to go ahead with the return. The customer services rep would then call me tomorrow to finalise. The buyer responded with (quote):
"sounds good. I've already confirmed with my national carrier that I can ship it back to you for less than $15DN (8.46) instead."
When I spoke to the customer services rep again today they said the buyer's last message made it sound like they were offering to ship it back and to let them send it. I said I didn't think that was their intent and I was feeling caught in the middle here but they asked me to clarify with the buyer. I messaged the buyer, naturally his quote about postage costs was only about how cheap it should have been to send and not an offer to return the item. He said this (quote):
"To clarify; the £5 postage you paid, indicated by your original postage label, was for the distance of the entire trip across the ocean — you set that price, not eBay. So charging me £32 but only spending £5 to ship the item was fraud and a violation of eBay’s TOS. I just can’t tell if it’s you who’s defrauding me or if it’s eBay. So I’ve been polite and decided to let eBay investigate and make the decision who is at fault. Since eBay has authorized the return I know that they found merit in my complaint.So, offering of an explanation (from eBay) of the cost of shipping is a waste of both of our time. If eBay has something they want to communicate to me they can contact me directly. My prev reply was simply to let you know I had already checked and confirmed the actual cost of shipping and that you were over charging me, before I contacted you or lodged my complaint to eBay. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have complained. There’s no reason why I should (or would) offer to pay for your (or eBay’s) shipping costs. I would just keep the parts. And if eBay was at fault they would pay for the return shipping.So you can either refund the difference *you* overcharged me and we can both move on immediately with our lives, or you can send me the return shipping labels at your expense. And you can spend another “£32” (we all know it doesn’t cost that so, lucky you) so I can ship you back your 312g of 3 plastic pieces and we can drag this out a couple more weeks until you receive the pieces. I hope that clarifies things sufficiently."
The customer services rep has arranged to call me back this Friday, but I've now realised if the case is not resolved within the next four days (Friday) the buyer will be automatically refunded without having to return the item. I tried to call again but got a completely different rep who didn't know anything about what was going on or
Can anyone suggest anything I can do or should have done differently here. I feel like I've not done anything wrong and I've followed all the rules. I'm banging my head against a wall trying to get them to understand how GSP works. Has anyone else had a situation like this that can offer any advice please?
Thanks all,
