And There's my First Cancel of a Sale... Sheesh

[k-bar-ksaddles]

So, woke up yesterday morning to find an Ammerman roping saddle of mine had sold during the night.  No questions from the buyer, no contact at all ahead of time (unusual for online sales, I've sold several on equinenow in the past, some through my FB page, etc - buyers ALWAYS have questions or ask for additional photos, measurements, weight, etc. because if you put the wrong size saddle on the wrong horse, you're asking to sore your horse up and possibly get you and your horse hurt when they react to the problem of a poorly fitting saddle).

Anyway, boxed it up nice and tidy and secure, went to print the shipping out this morning, UPS tells me the address is missing critical information and is undeliverable (It looked odd to me at the outset, but I thought perhaps given its going to NY, perhaps it was perfectly normal after all. UPS begs to differ).

I checked the address in Paypal as well, it all matches the ebay address, so something is at issue here.  I do note in this person's feedback they've purchased equestrian items in the past, always received glowing feedback.  

I went ahead and erred on the side of caution and cancelled the transaction with the Something Wrong with Address reason. I contacted the buyer, said UPS is telling me it will not ship due to the address being faulty.   

And now, we wait. (For the buyer's response, will they accept the refund, etc.) 

I've never ran across this sort of thing in my past-life on ebay, but I've read about the extensive and sometimes convoluted shipping scam horror stories here.  This may well be the last large/big ticket item I attempt to sell here.  This one left me feeling uneasy immediately.

[partial*eclipse]

If you hadn't already canceled the transaction, I would have advised you to check on the buyer's address by plugging it into the ZIP Code finder at usps.com.  Sometimes the problem is a minor as punctuation or abbreviations that don't suit USPS requirements.

[k-bar-ksaddles]

I did already cancel it.

However, when I go back to check through paypal now, it says they have no postal address on file.

Is that normal? 

Here's a copy pasta, with any personal information stripped to protect the innocent.

"November 30, 2017 at 7:09:51 AM PST

Transaction ID: 

Payment Status: COMPLETED

View invoice details:

Gross amount

-$585.00 USD

We have no postal address on file"

[kensgiftshop]

I wouldn't have canceled the sale until I heard from the buyer. It could have been something as simple as having to add street or circle to the address.

Did UPS give any suggestions on the address, like USPS does sometimes?

[k-bar-ksaddles]

Nope. Just said the address is undeliverable.

And it was a weird, weird address. It almost looked like an international address conflated with a US address.

But now Paypal tells me there is no address on file at all. 

[enzo7117]

This happened to me but I have 1 day shipping and did not hear from the buyer when I wrote. We would have gotten a late shipping ding if I didn't cancel. Right?

[k-bar-ksaddles]

I would like to mention, the buyer's name is one thing, the ship to name something wildly different.  

[duggmills]

The new, no-address on PayPal proves you did the right  by cancelling the transaction.

I wonder if the buyer cleaned out his account and erased his address as he has scammed others.

[threshold.sales.group]

Did you check the location via Google Maps or Google Earth? 

It's a long shot possibility, but some remote areas don't have regular UPS or FedEx service and end up with everything going USPS.  USPS also offers an address checking feature on their site.   

[k-bar-ksaddles]

I did not check in advance.  I can't check now because Paypal now shows they have no postal address on file for this person.

[chrysylys]

ALWAYS try to make contact with the buyer first.  There could be a simple fix.

[k-bar-ksaddles]

Okay, so I look at the feedback from last year, and this person wasn't buying anything to do with horses then. Mostly a lot of hijabs and performance parts for a honda CRX.

Forgive me if I sound like I'm profiling, but going back through the ebay fingerprints and taking a deeper look, this doesn't seem like a person who suddenly needs a heavy duty competition grade team roping saddle.  

If its a simple fix, I'll simply relist it in a private listing and they can repurchase with a corrected/good paypal address. I'm not shipping out a $585 saddle and eating it.  The more I look at the complete picture of what's going on here, the more uneasy I'm getting about this.  I don't care what your nationality or faith is, I'll sell to anyone, but this reeks of an attempt to scam a big ticket item.

[k-bar-ksaddles]

Looks like whatever they had to do on their end is done. Paypal shows refund and fee chargebacks completed, ebay shows order to be canceled.

No response from the buyer to my message I sent earlier this morning.

Paypal continues to show they have no address at all, whatsoever, on file for this buyer.

[dtexley3]

It may have been a reshipper company.  When people use reshippers they sometimes have very odd looking addresses because the buyers reshipper ID is embedded and not all know the correct way to do that.  

The buyer should have responded though.

[k-bar-ksaddles]

I managed to dig through paypal and found the address, popped it in google earth and it dropped me in a huge suburbub south of Queens, NY.  The building has two names on it: SomethingSomthing*** *** Logistics Inc and  SomethingSomething ****  RotchiUSA, Inc. and is a clearly commercial address. (Somethings and *** inserted by me to redact the actual names yet convey the type of name)

Possibly a reshipper, yes. 

Edit:

Freight forwarder. I googled both businesses. The second is an advertisting agency, the first is a confirmed reshipper.