Buyer to pay shipping after he gave wrong address and was returned to me
I sold something to someone who gave the wrong address and the package is on its way back to me. He wants it reshipped to him. I covered the shipping on the first round but told him for the second round he would have to cover the shipping. How can he pay for that as we are not allowed to do anything outside eBay?
11 comments
mam98031
·1 year ago@roy-n-charis
This does happen from time to time. As long as you shipped the item per Ebay's requirements, you would be covered under Seller Protection if the buyer were to file an INR. The buyer would not win.
The things you need to do to qualify for seller protection is: Ship within your stated handling time, ship with electronic tracking, update the listing with the tracking number if you used another label source other than Ebay and if the sale was $750+ you need to require a signature upon delivery.
Ebay has no vehicle in which to handle this type of situation, even though it is a common issue. So Ebay is aware that you may need to go offsite to get paid for reshipping and that is NOT an issue. It will not cause any problems with Ebay.
When the item arrives back, notify your buyer that you need to send them an invoice through PayPal [or however you want to do it outside of Ebay] for the reshipping costs. You need to charge whatever you did originally for shipping plus non recoverable fees like the fees from the site you are sending the invoice from. Let the buyer know to pay the invoice and then you will reship the item. Remind the buyer to make sure their ship to address is correct on the new payment.
Once the buyer has paid to reship the item, then create your new shipping label, however DO NOT do it from the original transaction in Ebay. That is risky as it could cause you to lose the details of the original tracking history which you need to maintain for your protection. Create you shipping label from PayPal or whatever site you prefer except NOT Ebay.
Then ship it and you are done.
Now if your buyer decides that YOU should foot this bill for reshipment, simply professionally and politely tell them NO as you did not create or have control over the issue. But if they don't want to pay for the reshipping, then you would be happy to refund them for their original purchase through Ebay LESS the original shipping and all non recoverable fees. Which would be the fees on the amount you keep plus the 30 or 40 cent per transaction fee. Buyer's choice pay to reship or refund original purchase with deductions described.
Do not worry about your feedback. If the buyer did venture out to try and post a negative feedback, chances are extremely high you could get it removed for cause.
Per the Ebay rules, you actually don't have to do anything for this buyer. You could actually get the item back, keep it and keep the buyer's money too. Ebay will not force you to refund on a situation like this. I an others do not support the taking advantage of the buyer and just keep their money and the product. Many of us do not feel that is the correct approach.
However some seller do just keep the money and the product. That of course is the seller's choice. I see it this way. Many sellers come to the boards complaining about Chargebacks when a buyer gets to keep the product AND get their money back. As sellers we all feel that is unfair. Yet there are sellers in this situation when they can do the same thing to a buyer and somehow feel justified in doing so. My mama always taught me that two wrongs do not make a right.
inhawaii
·1 year agoCan you ethically withhold original shipping charges even of the item was "free shipping"?
jonathanbrightlight
·1 year agoI would think ethically you could, and eBay won't force the issue. This isn't an item being returned by the buyer, it's a package that can't be delivered, so the rules are different. I'm sure some sellers would disagree on the ethics of it, but I would think there's no reason the seller should be forced to forfeit that cost they paid when it was the buyer's mistake.
12345jamesstamps
·1 year ago'gave me the wrong address'...I can't imagine anyone not knowing their address.
Driver's license, banking, rent or own a house, insurance for a car or house or apartment., etc.
Refund after item returned and blocked is just my opinion.
If it has a sticker on it 'refused'...that is another story.
reallynicestamps
·1 year ago@12345jamesstamps Don't you have a picture of all the Returned Wrong Address envelopes you have sent out?
The percentage of idiots- blithering and otherwise - in the world is amazingly high.
12345jamesstamps
·1 year agoI tend to think some of these buyers were trying to use credit card numbers not theirs putting in incorrect addresses on purpose to see what would happen.
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 year agoAdopt the only sane rule when asked to ship to an address other than the one on the Ebay order.
Refund and tell the buyer to reorder. Giving up Ebay protection for INR claims is not in your best interest.
Losing the sale is cheaper than losing the item, and far too often sellers will lose the item.
heckofagame
·1 year agoIn these situations, I refund, minus the shipping and let them repurchase if they want.
jonathanbrightlight
·1 year agoYep, that's my approach as well, and I think what eBay officially recommends.
@roy-n-charis
After you receive the item back, send a refund from the order details page for the item price, but you do not need to refund what you already spent on shipping. Note that this is different from cancelling the order, which will only let you issue a full refund. You can relist the item and the buyer can repurchase it with their address corrected.
You can call the buyer, phone number is in the order details and get the buyers PayPal address to send a payment request.
stuff4divas
·1 year ago@roy-n-charis in this case, u can send him a paypal invoice to pay from