eBay

jeffxxo · ‎12-23-2017

Recently sold an IPhone 6, buyer opened a return request and says it arrived but package was empty and states that the postman marked it "received unsealed, received with out contents". I know it was slealed and overly taped. I opened a claim with USPS and I did have insurance. It seems with eBay you as a seller have no leg to stand on. My only option is to refund the buyer. I asked the buyer to send pictures of the opened package but they said they can only do it through text and would need a phone number. Do I have any options other than a refund, and hope to be refunded by USPS?

vintagecraze50 · ‎12-25-2017

You need proof that the package was marked the way they said it was. No excuse for this. You need to make sure that if this person opens a case with Ebay that you call them and tell them you ar requiring the buyer to provided the evidence that the package was delivered this way, and you may need to tell them to hold your case until you can produce the proof. As others have said, you need to email the buyer back and tell them you want them to hold the package and the part that was stamped for the postal inspector.

kattinsanity · ‎12-25-2017

Why not? The buyer didn't care that he screwed up the OP's Christmas with what very well could be a scam to take the OP's money AND keep the phone. I wouldn't worry if it was Christmas or his birthday~~he'd get a call from me.

bigchief2472000 · ‎12-25-2017

@d-k_treasures wrote:
@bigchief2472000 wrote:
All ebay has to do is plug in the tracking number, my name, and any email address and they can get the pdf directly from USPS. No need for them to get it from me.
They can, but as explained above, they won't, so the case would be lost. Paypal is the same way.
IF you had a chargeback for INR, and IF you could get the sig conf from the insurance to the CC company, you would probably win, but PP wouldn't go that extra step and you don't have the ability to talk to the CC company, so you are out of luck there too.

I'll just say, ebay has some chinks in their armor that might result in legal issues if they ignored such evidence.

vintagecraze50 · ‎12-28-2017

"When will this end?"-- It's not going to end , especially with these high scam, high quick cash scams with these phones. Always an opportunist ready to pounce.

readabouthorses · ‎12-28-2017

I'd probably give him my phone number and say "text away" but I don't think my landline number is gonna get them.

Anonymous · ‎12-28-2017

File a claim with USPS. It's done online and fairly easy. I recently had a buyer complain an item was damaged, even though the box was not. They first sent me a picture, then sent back the item. It was indeed damaged, though I can't imagine how it got that way. Anyway, I filed a claim with USPS and they didn't even require a picture, it was optional. I purposely didn't include one to see if they'd ask for one after it was filed. They did not. I got my check for the full amount. Probably not as much as your iphone, but still it was nearly $200 and I got it easily. File right away and you should have the money fairly quickly. After my experience, I truly believe you get a lot better service from USPS customer service than ebay.

kattinsanity · ‎12-28-2017

BAD BAD BAD advice. You could have been screwed by having the buyer send you pics AND then having the buyer send it back. By sending it back the original insurance was voided. You just got lucky that the buyers post office didn't require that he bring it in for inspection. You would have never gotten refunded by USPS and you still would have had to refund the buyer.

chipper01work · ‎12-28-2017

@bigchief2472000 wrote:
@d-k_treasures wrote:
@bigchief2472000 wrote:
All ebay has to do is plug in the tracking number, my name, and any email address and they can get the pdf directly from USPS. No need for them to get it from me.
They can, but as explained above, they won't, so the case would be lost. Paypal is the same way.
IF you had a chargeback for INR, and IF you could get the sig conf from the insurance to the CC company, you would probably win, but PP wouldn't go that extra step and you don't have the ability to talk to the CC company, so you are out of luck there too.

I'll just say, ebay has some chinks in their armor that might result in legal issues if they ignored such evidence.

Feel free to try it out. Me, when I sell something for $750-$4000, I'll just pay the couple bucks for sig confirmation, but good luck with your approach though. I'll be money ahead anyhow, I am very comfortable shipping something for $750-$1500 without insurance. I will admit it would take a ballsy buyer though, they can get their money back from eBay easy enough without online viewable siggy but I would certainly not hesitate to point out to them that eBay is not the highest power in the land and I had a signature that pretty much slam dunks them on mail fraud if they got their money back by filing INR.

miyasamaco · ‎12-28-2017

If the item arrived empty, the USPS should have sent you a notification. The parcel should have also been stamped "RECEIVED WITHOUT CONTENTS". Your USPS receipt shows the weight and destination so hopefully you'll come out on top of what smells like an obvious scammer. This is why I won't sell anything over $15 on here anymore!

kattinsanity · ‎12-30-2017

Just last week I received a clear plastic envelope in the mail from USPS with the mailing envelope & the item I had ordered back in October but never received. It was a really small part for a guitar and it was in teeny tiny pieces inside another envelope~~it took me a while to figure out what it was. It must have gotten caught in a machine and got ripped apart and the item smashed. I don't know how they collected all the tiny pieces to put in the envelope. It took 2 months for USPS to send it to me.

The OP said the buyer told them HIS postman marked it as empty. I would think if it was received empty by his post office it would have been marked by them and not his postman and probably placed in a bag like mine was. For a phone to have been missing from the package it should have been pretty visible to anyone.

Wonder what the OP found out & if they got the pictures?

jeffxxo · ‎01-03-2018

Well the user did upload pics of the package via eBay. It looked like a knife opened the package and it did have a Usps sticker on it dated the day I dropped it off at Usps. eBay had me tell the buyer to call them so they could start some “process”. eBay asked Buyer to fill out some ic30 form.?. (eBay took over at this point) During this time Buyer received a letter from Usps to drop off the empty package, which the Buyer said they were going to do yesterday. Today I received an email stating that this case is closed as the Buyer didn’t provide what eBay had asked for and the money has been released to me. I still need to follow up with Usps, I would like to know at what point was my package opened and was there a theft prior to delivery.

bigchief2472000 · ‎01-03-2018

USPS should have some intermittent weight scans of the package along the way, or scanned images of the packages from their sorting machine that could give a general idea of where the item came up missing. I would still proceed with the insurance claim and if you get reimbursed for it from USPS, pass that along to the buyer.

emerald40 · ‎01-04-2018

@chipper01work wrote:
@bigchief2472000 wrote:
@d-k_treasures wrote:
@bigchief2472000 wrote:
All ebay has to do is plug in the tracking number, my name, and any email address and they can get the pdf directly from USPS. No need for them to get it from me.
They can, but as explained above, they won't, so the case would be lost. Paypal is the same way.
IF you had a chargeback for INR, and IF you could get the sig conf from the insurance to the CC company, you would probably win, but PP wouldn't go that extra step and you don't have the ability to talk to the CC company, so you are out of luck there too.

I'll just say, ebay has some chinks in their armor that might result in legal issues if they ignored such evidence.
Feel free to try it out. Me, when I sell something for $750-$4000, I'll just pay the couple bucks for sig confirmation, but good luck with your approach though. I'll be money ahead anyhow, I am very comfortable shipping something for $750-$1500 without insurance. I will admit it would take a ballsy buyer though, they can get their money back from eBay easy enough without online viewable siggy but I would certainly not hesitate to point out to them that eBay is not the highest power in the land and I had a signature that pretty much slam dunks them on mail fraud if they got their money back by filing INR.

____________________________________________________________

So where would you go for that higher power. The post office, an attorney.

The latter is very expensive. And with the former you no longer sign a piece of paper but one of those electronic things. If you have ever done so, your signature looks nothing like it does IRL.
You can claim you did not sign it.

So how would the Post Office prove otherwise. In my area they are so sloppy with where they deliver mail (we have a communal box and sometimes we do not get mail until 7:30 at night) that 1/2 the time we have to exchange mail with each other because it was in the wrong box.

And because they cannot see the house numbers, I have had them come to my home to sign for a package that was not mine.

emerald40 · ‎01-04-2018

@jeffxxo wrote:
Well the user did upload pics of the package via eBay. It looked like a knife opened the package and it did have a Usps sticker on it dated the day I dropped it off at Usps. eBay had me tell the buyer to call them so they could start some “process”. eBay asked Buyer to fill out some ic30 form.?. (eBay took over at this point) During this time Buyer received a letter from Usps to drop off the empty package, which the Buyer said they were going to do yesterday. Today I received an email stating that this case is closed as the Buyer didn’t provide what eBay had asked for and the money has been released to me. I still need to follow up with Usps, I would like to know at what point was my package opened and was there a theft prior to delivery.

__________________________________________________________

JMO but when a buyer does not cooperate there is usually a reason for it.

If the contents were stolen prior to my receiving the package I would do everything I could, just like you did, to clear my name an not lose the money.