Hi, I'd like advice on whether its worth pursuing Ebay, to a Small Claims Court in the UK if necessary, over the loss of an item in the post. I sold a camera lens in June 2020 for £560. I posted it to the address provided by the seller, which was a 'Click and Collect' address in Aberdeen that he had selected from a list provided by Ebay on the website. The address proved to be incorrect, inasmuch as it had an 'eCP' reference, but didn't have the store name that the seller should have specified as part of the address. It was posted via RoyalMail as a signed for, next day, parcel. It got as far as the DO (delivery office) in Aberdeen, who identifed that the address was incomplete and marked the tracking for the item as 'Incorrectly Addressed. Return to Sender'. I never got the parcel back and lodged a claim for loss with RoyalMail, which got rejected as one of their T&Cs is that they are not responsible for the loss of incorrectly addressed items. I took this case as far as the Ombudsman who deals with RoyalMail disputes, but lost the case. The parcel had my return address on it, and would have been damn difficult to lose. The parcel didn't get passed on to their National Collections Centre for lost mail either. I suspect that it got 'lifted' by an employee or contractor though I've obviously got no way of proving this. I'm looking to see if it comes up on Ebay via another seller! When the buyer started to contact me saying that the item hadn't been delivered was when, upon investigating how 'Click and Collect' works, I realised that the address was incomplete. He said he just selected it from a drop-down list and made no alterations to it (and indeed I don't think you can even if you wanted to). Sure enough, when he looked at the list entry for this particular Click and Collect store when purchasing another item, the address was incomplete. At some point the address got taken down, I think. During the 'what the hell has happened?' period, I tried to contact Ebay regarding this, but found no way I could navigate past the unheplful 'help' pages on the website to write or speak to anyone, and I asked the buyer to raise a dispute on the item in case he had more luck, hoping that Ebay would have a look at the addressing. They didn't. They just waited until the end of the dispute period and found in favour of the buyer as I (obviously) couldn't provide proof that the item had been delivered. I objected to their decision, but got nowhere, Nor did that even bother to look at the Click and Collect addressing to identify for themselves that something was wrong, correct it, and apologize. That's when I started to pursure RoyalMail - though as stated above that didn't achieve a result either. So for, I've got no lens, have paid for postage, and both Ebay and Paypal have claimed fees from me for the item. So I'm back with trying to decide oi whether to pursue Ebay for the loss. My point is, why should I be any more liable for the cost of the loss than Ebay, who provided the incorrect address in the first place, or the buyer who selected it and didn't realise it was incomplete any more than I did? With hindsight Ebay do provide some information about Click and Collect, and RoyalMail found an article (though I can't find myself find it - can you??) saying that the eCP number should appear on the second line of the address and implying that a store name should be on the first line. The address I was given was formatted as <persons name>,<eCP number>,<Road Name>,<District>,<Postcode>. Any advice on what I do from here? Needless to say the stress, frustration and grief this has caused me so far has been enormous..
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