Further to this, I later discovered the reason why Royal Mail rejected the parcel was because eBay produced a label that was marked "large letter" and not "small parcel" in the small box above the bar code.
The Royal Mail use a letterbox template, if you have been in the post office you may have seen them doing this. They try and put the item through the slot, which is the size of a standard letterbox, if the item does not fit then it is classed as a small parcel not a letter.
It sounds like a technicality, but it isn't. A large letter sent Tracked 24 costs £3.30, where a small parcel sent Tracked 24 costs £3.99. A small parcel sent Tracked 48 costs £3.99
I usually fill this information for myself on Royal Mail's website, where I have bought around 1,500 labels within the last two years. I never even noticed the box until this item caused the fuss it has caused.
The mailer was oversize on one dimension out of three to be a large lettert, so it failed the Royal Mail template test and got rejected.
Royal Mail then held this for a week before informing the buyer that the postage was underpaid. They did not pass on any information to me, the seller, so that I could rectify the problem. Whenever I checked on their track and trace, all I got was a message saying "We've got it".
After a week, Royal Mail demanded a payment of £3.50 from the buyer, even though they had taken more than 48 hours to deliver and could have delivered Tracked 48 for 1p less than was paid. (3.29 against 3.30 paid)
When I discovered this, I contacted eBay who played Pontius Pilot, washed their hands of the matter and told me that postage was not their responsibility. They encourage you to buy postage labels from them, they brag about the shipping discounts they can pass on because of the volume of business they generate and they put their branding on the labels that are printed, but its not their responsibility. Brilliant.
I then contacted Royal Mail and asked them why they had not delivered the item as there had been enough postage paid for a delayed delivery of more than 24 hours. They also played Pontius Pilot, had no explanation for why the buyer ended up paying £6.49 for delivery of something that should have cost half that. They did it because the computer, Horizon, told them to do it. That's the same Horizon that is currently embroiled in the post office scandal recently dramatised by ITV.
Royal Mail also said that the formatting of the labels used by eBay is down to eBay.
I have branded this, "Pontius Pilot plays digital ping pong". Or as my old dad used to say, "To me, to you, to me".
In reality its all my fault for not spotting this error before purchasing the label of course.
eBay and Royal Mail must deal with thousands of items that this happens to, so an overcharge of £3.50 each time must add up to a tidy extra sum.
I asked the question why can't eBay produce the correct label? They have all of the information from the original listings to know that if the item is a 12inch vinyl record, it can never be sent as a large letter because it does not fit the Royal Mail's criteria. Its always a small parcel.
So why can't they write that into the line of programming that creates the postage label for this kind of item?
I have had no reply to this question.
In the meantime, I have been left with the first negative feedback I have ever had in over 5,000 transactions on eBay and other platforms.
To be fair, it did turn out that the buyer was one of the most obnoxious, rude and horrible people I have had the misfortune to deal with. But that just leads me on to another topic that regards how eBay managed this, given that I contacted their agents on at least three different occasions when the buyer was getting really rude and vaguely threatening with me. Each time, the agents told me that they had my back, not to worry they could see how he was behaving and so on.
Then, when he dropped his negative feedback, eBay have done nothing. they have ignored me and so far have allowed the feedback to stand. Now, every time I go onto eBay, I see this feedback. Its going to remind me of what was utimately a minor error for the rest of my days.
All in all, not a great experience and I think I will drop eBay as a seller again. I was going to populate my page with thousands of items for people to buy and eBay to collect fees on but following on from this I think I am going to go back to Discogs exclusively. At least people on there are treated with real respect and the moderators act as they say they will and don't string you along with a pack of lies.
