eBay & Royal mail Scandal

[jakejim]

My story for the news.

I sold a sewing machine on eBay a while ago which needed some work.

Unfortunately, what I did not know was the trouble I would be getting

After I sold this sewing machine.

Royal mail had just opened a new collection free service for items to be collected from your address. This sewing machine was due to be collected from my address on Wednesday 23 November 2022* between 09.48am and 12.48pm for the following item(s)

Tracking number TQ050115522GB.

Unfortunately, on that day I was visited by not just one but three royal mail postmen. I asked each postman are they here to collect my parcel which was the sewing machine.

Each one of the three postman said no sorry.

Which I found odd.so I contacted royal mail to find out why my parcel was not collected. They said we are very sorry we will send someone out the next day to collect the parcel from you. Which did not happen.I looked on the royal mail site and noticed that my tracking number showed as collected. Now this sewing machine weighs 15kgs and was still sitting on my floor in the front room. So, I contacted royal mail. Saying how can my parcel show as collected if its still with me.

Royal mail told me that it must be a scanning error. In other words, the postman that came to my address on the day of collection one out of three of them had scanned someone else's parcels. Instead of collecting my parcel from my address. Hence showing on the tracking number collected.

So, I continue to contact royal mail over this problem.I found out that one of the postmen had put my labels on someone else's parcels.

Hence me being able to follow the status of my tracking number.

I contacted royal mail again and again.They told me to arrange another collection from my address and

It would be free of charge considering no one collected my parcel in the first place.

But I found it very odd when they said just use the same tracking number. Which surly would not work.

I arranged another collection anyway. But yet again no collection took place.

So I was on the phone to royal mail again and again. Only to see on the tracking details that my parcel was delivered. Or should I say my parcels that I did not send to the buyer's address were delivered.Royal mail even took a photo of the parcels outside the buyer's front door. Which I thought great thank you for even more evidence of the mess you have made. I am still waiting now for my refund off royal mail which is £9.45p and I am still contacting them over and over again. Just to be told to wait until they issue the cheque.

It's been nearly three months. How ridiculous can they get.The buyer received these two parcels and said How come today I received an item just now that I haven't ordered while you said that haven't even posted my machine?

Pictures attached. Which was a gun scope and something else of someone else's parcels that royal mail delivered to this buyer's address with my tracking label details on both the parcels. Now this brings someone else's item's that have gone missing with royal mail. Not clever at all. Even though I tried to explain to the buyer what happened they were not understanding. They decided to open a case against me to get there money back for the sewing machine.Which was understanding and said if I want my items back, I would need to send them a shipping label.

No Matter how many times I told the buyer these items were not mine I never sent them royal mail sent them to you.

The buyer said The top label, that is on the item received by me yesterday with my contacts on it was supposed to go on the machine that i have ordered.

Its 15 kg, all contacts are correct, but not the item, which simply suggests that you have placed a wrong label. Irrelevant of who made a mistake it has nothing to do with me and I certainly don't have time chasing your, or someone else mistakes.if you need this item returned to you will have to issue a return label as I'm not going to invest my money once again to cover someone else mistakes.

If you can't send the machine you will need to cancel the order.

I will contact eBay and inform them of above.Then said Address on the label is my correct address otherwise I wouldn't have received it.

I believe it's the best if Ebay will investigate as I have ordered sewing machine and received something else.

So I got the blame for royal mail's mess. Buyer got refunded which was no problem due to royal mail making a mess of the whole collection. So, I contact royal mail to say that the parcels they have delivered are at this address.They need to contact this person to get the parcels back. Unfortunately, my response was not what I expected.

Royal mail told me that they could not contact the person at the address they sent the parcels to due to it being they were not allowed to contact the person and needed the person's consent. Which sounds very odd to me considering they can send someone else's parcels to someone's address they do not know. So, I contacted the buyer and said you need to contact royal mail in order for them to pick the parcels up from your address due to them making this mistake. No contact was made. So, I decided to watch this buyer. You guessed it they are now selling the scope which is stolen from royal mail on the eBay platform. So, I contacted eBay showing them all of the proof I have with this buyer and pictures over and over again. To get the gun scope taken off the eBay platform.Unfortunately, eBay are to another company who just do not care considering the findings I have and the proof I have.

The listing will be ending soon on the eBay platform item number 314307165470

Which is a Simmons Rifle Scope Model 517711 3-9x40 WA Black Matte.If you are the person who lost this with royal mail now you will know where it has gone.

So, my point here is eBay is allowing a buyer that has not bothered contacting royal mail over royal mail's mistake of knowing where the item is that they delivered to this buyer's address.

Which is stolen goods being sold on eBay. No matter how many times I have reported this listing to eBay. So there you have it. Two big companies royal mail and eBay not doing there job properly.

But you guessed it, not even the news is interested in this scandal.

[rigged_out]

There may be a small chance that the rifle scopes are another seller on ebay? If you do a search for similar stuff and select located nearest to you, does a seller show up? It could be their item and a message to them may help them get their stuff back. If the postie stuck the wrong label on it's got to be someone very close to you.

It sounds a right mess. Customer service with ebay are not going to be able to sort something like this out. RM will obviously just ignore it. 

As for the buyer, by law he should make the item available for collection at the very least if they have been sent unsolicited goods and not be selling them so soon. 

Or just forget about it and move on whilst waiting for reimbursement from RM. I'd print your own label and avoid asking RM to bring a label for collection.

[four_mid_able]

I need new eyes.

[papso22]

It's a quite extraordinary tale of woe.  Why 3 posties would turn up is a mystery, and then to compound it with the tracking error is beyond belief.

[tressygirl]

Truly incredible situation and the newish Collection from home service in your area has certainly not been thought out/worked out correctly by RM.

Your tale would certainly put me off ,  trying this service.

[jakejim]

Hi there

Thank you for your reply.

Yes this rifle scope and the other thing that was delivered to the buyer's address by the royal mail by mistake knowing full well that eBay and royal mail were doing wrong with all of the proof I have in a folder.Was being sold from that buyer's address.Yet royal mail failed to take any action as like eBay did not take it off the auction.So even having all of the proof and showing eBay what was going on.They did nothing and allowed the buyer to sell the item to someone else on eBay.The buyer also failed to make contact with the royal mail even though I asked them too.The goods which were someone else's parcels and not mine royal mail should of taken the other persons details in order to help them out with there lost items even though I have all the proof and would be easy to sort out for the other person due to me having all of the details.

Yes I goto the post office now and send all my items tracked.Even though it is more expensive at least I know they are on there way.kind regards 

[jakejim]

Yes quite a mess and a lot of writingbut it best to start at the beginning so people know what has happened 

[jakejim]

Hi there thank you for your reply.

Yes it is quite a mess.

Three posties one delivering parcels.

One posting letters.

Another one posting parcel and supposed to be collecting a parcel.

Which could of been any of the three that could of picked up my sowing machine.

Then one of the three posties sticking my tracking details to two other person's parcels to the buyer's

Address then taking a photograph of the two parcels I never sent at the front door of the buyer's address.

Yes I know how stupid can you get.

Kind regards 

[jakejim]

Hi there thank you for your reply

Yes I expect it would put a lot of people off.

But when your waiting for a collection for a buyer to have and royal mail mess it up.

You want to be on top of things so you can find out as much as you can to why this has happened.

Hence why I have kept all of this in a folder hoping the news would like a good story but they are not interested either.Which you kind of think why not.?

Kind regards 

[technthread]

There isn't much of a story here as it is just human error / ineptitude.

I use RM home collection sometimes but never rely on anyone to put a label on a parcel but myself as these things are always bound to happen eventually if you put that responsibility on the postie. 

[jakejim]

Thank you for your reply

But there is always one really who thinks there's an easier way. When you have a printer.

Yet with no printer you have to do with what you have.

So unfortunately I had no choice but to go down this route.

With the amount of problems and human error's you would of thought by now.

They had got it right.

Yes before you say it I know its the way the world is these days with no one talking to each other.

Bit silly really

Kind regards 

[sml192]

Clearly Royal Mail have messed up royally here and are not interested in taking any responsibility for it. 

However, I don't see that your buyer has done or is doing anything wrong here.  They certainly haven't stolen anything, just received unsolicited goods that they are now trying to dispose of. 

You have no way of knowing whether they made any attempt to contact Royal Mail or not.   Even if they did Royal Mail would not be interested as you have discovered yourself.

Your buyer would have no way of knowing who either the true sender or  true recipient were and has held onto these items more than long enough before disposing of them, nearly a year and half in fact! 

[jakejim]

Hi there

Thank you for your message

Yes they have clearly messed up. ( Royal mail )

This is interesting your answer to your first question

( However, I don't see that your buyer has done or is doing anything wrong here.  They certainly haven't stolen anything, just received unsolicited goods that they are now trying to dispose of. )

The buyer was instructed by me and royal mail to contact them in receiving the unsolicited goods.

They said that they are not going to chase around other people's mistakes and blamed me even though this was not my fault.They also know that royal mail had made this big mistake due to the tracking labels having there correct address but not the correct items,even though I told them I never sent the items.the labels had my return address on.so being if you was that buyer you would of known that you have ordered off that seller but have got the wrong items and had known they have messed up.

Question 2

You have no way of knowing whether they made any attempt to contact Royal Mail or not. Even if they did Royal Mail would not be interested as you have discovered yourself.

Already mentioned they were making no attempt to contact royal mail due to what they already knew what was going on and not chasing anyone else's mistakes.

Question 3

Your buyer would have no way of knowing who either the true sender or  true recipient were and has held onto these items more than long enough before disposing of them, nearly a year and half in fact! 

This one is the most interesting

If the buyer had no way of knowing who the true sender was.then how come they ordered off me knowing my correct address and tracking details which was on the labels to which they received the unsolicited goods at there address after I mentioned about what has been going on with the correct parcel they should of been getting in the first place.

My question is how can you say it has been a year and a half in fact ????

[jakejim]

Also you say they have done nothing wrong in this message.

( However, I don't see that your buyer has done or is doing anything wrong here.  They certainly haven't stolen anything, just received unsolicited goods that they are now trying to dispose of. )

Yet you mentioned here they have not stolen it.

But they have not sent it back to royal mail knowing full well that these goods do not belong to them and have sold them on eBay.

Which in fact is stolen goods knowing full well that these items are not there's to sell.

It's like you ordered a push bike of me i send you a sowing machine with my tracking details on the label.yet the push bike is in my front room I never sent you a sowing machine knowing full well thats not what you ordered and not what the seller sent you.showing you a picture of the push bike in the front room showing you that i still have it.yet you got someone esles sowing machine.but you have not stolen it or even bothered sending it back to royal mail.so decide to dispose of it ??? Like selling on ebay

[sml192]

My question is how can you say it has been a year and a half in fact ????

You stated in your original post that the sewing machine was to be collected on Wednesday 23rd November 2022 so presumably your buyer would have received the unsolicited items around the same time, which is just over 15 months ago (I did mean in my previous post to say nearly  a year and a half, sorry). 

[sml192]

Actually I did type nearly in my original post. 

[jakejim]

Oh yes sorry its been a long day

[jakejim]

Again accept my apologies

It's been a busy day

Kind regards 

[papso22]

---

@sml192 wrote:

My question is how can you say it has been a year and a half in fact ????

You stated in your original post that the sewing machine was to be collected on Wednesday 23rd November 2022 so presumably your buyer would have received the unsolicited items around the same time, which is just over 15 months ago (I did mean in my previous post to say nearly  a year and a half, sorry). 

---

Which puts it around the time that RM introduced collections, with very little guidance for posties.  Not surprising there were errors at that time.

Really, really, old 'news'.

[jakejim]

Oh dear I have already apologised

Yes maybe old news but still a scandal in both companies

I see you like to pick out bits in my story.

To add to your reply to make it look like you know when the collection's first started

Even though it's there already in my statement.