Wrong shipping address

Question,

I offered free shipping on an item and the item came back to me as undeliverable. Reached out to the buyer and she forgot part of the address. Do I have to ship it back to her again for free? If so, could I just cancel the order as it will cost me more to ship twice than its worth.

Mike

cowlick2

496 View listings

Posted 2 years ago·Last reply 2 years ago

9 comments

wastingtime101

·2 years ago

0 View listings

@cowlick2 wrote:

I offered free shipping on an item and the item came back to me as undeliverable. Reached out to the buyer and she forgot part of the address. Do I have to ship it back to her again for free? If so, could I just cancel the order as it will cost me more to ship twice than its worth.

@cowlick2 Contrary to what was said above, you do not have to refund ship costs just because the original listing offered free shipping. This is my standard advice for RTS (returned to sender) packages. Take the parts that are relevant to your situation.

You have a few options. You should decide which route you'll be taking and communicate with the buyer, but wait until the item is returned (and delivered) to you before you take any of the following actions.

You can refund the buyer the item cost minus original shipping and minus a portion of your eBay fees (fee credits are prorated on a partial refund so you won't get back fees on the shipping amount you withhold). Go to your orders page, find the transaction and select "send refund." On the next page enter the amount. After that, relist the item and if you still want to work with this buyer you can tell them to repurchase it with the correct name/address.
Have the buyer sort out their address issue then pay for re-shipping. Send them an invoice through PayPal or give them your PayPal e-mail. This is post-sale so it's OK to exchange e-mail addresses. It's also OK to ship to a different address because it's technically not tied to the original transaction. You would not purchase the shipping label through eBay or upload tracking to the transaction. You would purchase it from an alternate site like pirateship.com or paypal.com/shipnow and you can send the buyer the new tracking # through e-mail or eBay messages.
A different way to accomplish buyer payment for re-shipping is to create an eBay listing for the shipping cost (bumping it up to factor in eBay fees) and having the buyer purchase it, entering their correct address at checkout. You could purchase a shipping label through eBay for that transaction.
You can cancel the transaction "problem with address" which will trigger a full refund to the buyer and your FVF would be credited.
You can do nothing. The buyer's MBG protection is voided when there's a package delivery attempt. I don't recommend this because even though you'll win an INR (item not received) claim on eBay, there's nothing stopping that buyer from going to their credit card to file a dispute and why deal with all that? I also think handling it before it gets to this stage with a partial refund is the "right" thing to do if you're not going to make reshipping arrangements.
You might also want to direct the buyer to this page so their address is updated for future purchases: Account Settings: Addresses

ten_o_nine

·2 years ago

7439 View listings

Usually, buyers will admit their mistake and ask to reship and offer to pay for reshipping, and no, you don't have to ship again for free.

12345jamesstamps

·2 years ago

8707 View listings

I will assume buyer never purchased anything before on eBay since buyer forgot part of the address. So I assume buyer has no feedback for purchases done in the past?

Cancel the sale due to something wrong with the address.

Sounds like drama if you reship item to buyer. Just my personal opinion...I would block the buyer. My time is too valuable to be dealing with drama.

pjcdn2005

·2 years ago

3879 View listings

If you cancel the order you will have to refund the buyer the full price paid. Since the buyer forgot to put in the full address they wonâ€™t qualify for buyer protection so you are allowed to refund them less the cost of shipping. You would have to use the send refund button to give a partial refund. The buyer could repurchase the item again through a new listing.

Another option â€” if the buyer still wants the item and you are willing to ship it to them, they can repay you the shipping amount through a service such as PayPal or Venmo. Then you would not have to refund.

az93

·2 years ago

12940 View listings

I don't buy the story. I don't know why you opened that can of worms by contacting buyer. Had you waited for buyer to contact you ( like I do) then the package would belong to you. They almost never contact you and that's the end of it. If you are wondering why I don't buy the story, it's because buyers don't hand type their address for delivery. The seller is given the buyer's address on file. If buyer has the wrong address on file you may just get it back again. Canceling can cause problems and fees for the seller, so don't be quick to cancel.