Buyer didn't collect their parcel from Royal Mail

[ruths1802]

I posted a parcel on the 6th October and the buyer contacted me on the 24th November (in faulting English) saying that the parcel is not at the post office. I replied that I had sent it and would find the posting information. They then replied saying that 'they were on holiday and when they came back they went to the post office with the ticket and the people there said that the package is not there'.

Where do I stand if they are at fault by not collecting the parcel in time, considering that it was posted 7 weeks ago!

Many thanks.

[john1297576]

Asking at the Post office was a waste of time, it is Royal mail who deliver and enquiries should have been made at the local RM Delivery Office.

Without proof of tracked delivery if buyer opens a Paypal Case, then you will have to refund.  If you have not put a return address on the Package, it will not be returned to you and will just end up with all undelivered mail in Belfast.

[m25jet]

If the parcel was posted on 6th October but the buyer didn't contact  you until 24th November then he won't be able to rely on eBay to help him.  eBay allow buyers up to thirty days from the last estimated date of delivery to open a case against the seller, so unless there was an extremely long delivery window available on the item then your buyer is likely to find that it is too late for him to open an eBay case against you and escalate it to eBay in order to force a refund.

You said in your post "I replied that I had sent it and would find the posting information."  Did you not upload the tracking number after you had posted the item?  If you had done so then you would not have needed to look for the posting information, as the tracking number would have been readily available next to the item in the Sold Items section of your My Selling page.

You also said that the buyer claims that the item was not at the Post Office.  The Post Office would not keep the item indefinitely if the postman had been unable to deliver the item to the buyer and had left a "Sorry, You Were Out" card for the buyer with an address to collect the package from.  Therefore, if you had written an "If undelivered please return to..." address on the reverse of the package then if the buyer failed to collect the item in time the package would have been returned to you.  If you included a returns address on the back of the parcel and you haven't recieved the item back yet then either the buyer is lying and actually received the item but is trying to mislead you into believing that he never received the item in order to try and get a refund, or if he is telling the truth then the item must have been lost in transit.

Given that it's been seven weeks since you posted the item eBay won't want to know about the matter now, as the buyer has run out of time to open an eBay case.  However, the buyer could still end up opening a PayPal case against you, as PayPal give buyers up to one hundred and eighty days to open a case against a seller if need be.  Therefore, if you have the tracking number, add it against the item in your Sold Items section on your All Selling page, then log into your PayPal account and add it there as well, just in case the buyer does decide to open an Item Not Received case against you via PayPal.

If the buyer does open a PayPal case against you then PayPal will put a trace on the tracking details to see whether or not the item was actually delivered.  PayPal tend to check cases far more closely than eBay do, so if they find that the item was delivered to the buyer's address then you won't have to refund the buyer.  If, on the other hand, they find that the tracking details indicate that the item never reached the buyer, or if you failed to post the item via a tracked means of postage, then PayPal will decide the case in the buyer's favour and issue a full refund.

Finally, if you haven't already done so, add this buyer's User ID to your Blocked Bidders List so that he cannot purchase anything else from you in the future and cause you any further problems.