Update on this. Sorry, but it's a saga (small rant).
For one item affected by this, it came back to me some 5 days later and I was able to use the replacement label to resend it and it got to them. Almost two weeks after buying it but they got it ok. Fine.
For the other item, I had another suitable item and so I sent that out also on the replacement label and awaited the return of the original. This proved to be a mistake. The original, despite being marked as requiring return to sender, made its slow way to the buyer collection point (yes I could see photo of drop off) but then disappeared from the Evri system and my buyer was told it was not there when she went to collect. My replacement turned up at the same parcelshop a couple of days later and my buyer was able to pick that up. Still no sign of the first one at either her end or mine. Called ebay support. Very helpful. Said it was a Simple Delivery issue so sadly she could not resolve it for me but would write everything up and transfer it to them. I should hear back from someone by email within 24-48 hours. I gave it more than 48 hours and called them again. Slightly less helpful lady said she could not see anything done by the earlier rep and that, in any case, there was no solution to be offered as I needed to open a case. I told her I couldn't as there was no dispute from buyer (who was now happy with her replacement item) and by now the tracking of the two items had disappeared from my portal. I could only see the last successful one. We went back and forth a little and I asked to escalate. Short wait for manager. More responsive but initially just as lacking in solutions. Eventually told me that I would have to contact the buyer to get her to open an "item not received" case and it would go from there. I asserted that that was unlikely as she had received the replacement and that anyway, all of this kerfuffle was a result of ebay's communication to me and Evri failing to do what ebay had instructed. After some more discussion about how unlikely this was he accepted that there was a discretionary approach ebay could take in order to leave me whole but it would take some days maybe a couple of weeks. I am now waiting on that and will see how it goes. I am not sure what I would do differently next time but I should probably be less helpful to my buyer and not send another one out before I knew where the original was. Lesson learned. Also this issue has taken almost 3 hours of phone time to ebay support since my initial call about the mysterious "sender request to return" so it has cost both me and them a lot of effort to resolve as well as any commercial impact of the system failings, wherever they occurred. I am off now to get a restorative cuppa as this all been somewhat stressful! Good luck folks if you have similar problems.
