Is this unethical?

[inhawaii]

I usually reach out to and/or refund and/or  re-ship when a customer's package is returned.

Last night I found 2 packages that were returned to sender (for whatever reason) months ago.

I never reached out to the buyers.

The buyers never reached out to me. 

I never refunded.

It wasn't a money issue. It was a "i forgot" issue.

A couple of questions...

#1) When you have an item returned, do you try to contact the buyer -or- wait for them to contact to you?

#2) If the buyer doesn't respond, do you automatically refund?

#3) Is there a time limit sellers have to refund a buyer/transaction?

#4) Is having a "no contact/no refund" if they don't contact you policy unethical? 

[slippinjimmy]

a sobering stat.....

Almost 1% of the persons currently located in the US today will be deceased by this time next year.

That could include about 60,000 eBay users that have sold  at least 1 item in the next 12 months.

The eBay number is probably high because not very many sub 18 years olds are included as well as REALLY old people and REALLY sick people. Still, there could be 75 deceased eBay sellers every day.

Apologies if this sounds depressing, it's depressing me 😓

[iamalwaysright]

To clarify, I tell buyers to check with neighbors/family/household and mail carriers not because I don’t believe them or anything. I do it because in my experience majority of the time that’s the best way to locate their package. I never second guess their claims at the beginning as I never think there’s enough info to determine its legitimacy. I’d say a high majority of the time it ended up with a neighbor. Second would be their carrier had it (which means falsely scanned as delivered). Other times it was just stolen by porch pirates (admitted by the buyers). All that covers about 95% of these INRs. Who knows if the buyers actually lied about their outcomes to cover up their first lie when trying to look for a freebie. Doesn’t matter to me.

For the most part I think my buyers are telling the truth that they don’t have the item. The problem is that they most of the time aren’t too bright. And when they don’t care enough to go the extra mile for themselves and follow my tips on locating it, then I don’t need to care to go the extra mile for them.

[iamalwaysright]

You must be fun at parties, haha. Glad to know that you’re still kicking tho.

[gurlcat]

No, those are pretty interesting data.  And smile, it's just part of life.  I hope to still be doing this when I go.  And buyers, if they passed while waiting for an item to arrive, then they almost certainly didn't have Alzheimer's and most likely still lived at home rather than a facility.  -That's what my first real job was, nursing assistant.  I saw things I'd still struggle to describe and wouldn't want to burden anyone with.  But if there was any silver lining it was gaining, at only 18, a dang low extreme calibration for "depressing," seeing more despair and death than most modern Westerners ever see, because we always cloister it away to hospitals now.  So from there I can only admire and marvel at old people for as long as any remnants of their real selves remain extant.  We're lucky if we get to know any, and lucky if we get old without too much bitterness and despair. 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IRWnSbWPeU4 

[fbusoni]

@inhawaii 

My policy is to never wait to hear from such a buyer.  And I definitely do not want to hear from eBay because of such an issue.

Over many years of selling, I've had two packages go missing in the USPS system for customers who never contacted me to tell me that they had not received their items.

The only reason I knew that the items had been lost was because I check my orders once a week or so to see what has and has not been delivered.

For those which have not been delivered, I check on tracking and, if enough time has elapsed, will run the tracking numbers by my local post office, which will tell me where they are (if they indeed can be located in the system). 

Anyway, in both instances I proactively wrote to the buyers that I had determined that their items were lost and would be issuing them a refund.

I never heard back from either buyer.  

But I do sleep well at night, knowing that eBay's relentless bots will not be finding any discrepancies between items ordered and items delivered.  😊

[meme6253]

I love the Nopety-nope, Don't know if the word actually exist, but if it doesn't it should!

[meme6253]

Goes to show you just how slow the mail can be!

[meme6253]

If you can sleep at night in comfort, Then you did the right thing!

[simba6]

Buyers don't always keep track it seems.  I have seen a number of posts where buyers discover a purchase missing a year later and are asking what to do about it.  However,  I have had many packages delivered that were never marked delivered.  Could be some you refunded were delivered and the buyer did not want to let you know once they got the refund.

So you could be refunding more than you need to.

[gurlcat]

I watch tracking and proactively contact buyers about stuck or mis-routed packages too -just yesterday I noticed a package that hadn't had any scans for a few days was finally showing in California ..... when it was supposed to go to New York, literally the far opposite end of the country!  So I wrote her to say I'm watching and will act accordingly if it doesn't right itself quickly, and she thanked me. 

I feel a return to sender package is a whole other thing though.  Whereas the lost/mis-routed is probably being actively anticipated by a buyer who definitely ordered it and wants it .... a RTS one is something "off" because it went all the way to their address (or at least town), then came all the way back to me ... and yet they haven't said a peep about it?  Remember, sometimes a RTS is actively performed by the address recipient themselves (could be a new resident at the home or could even be the actual buyer, just doing RTS as a way of "cancelling" their order, and I am not playing games; they need to TALK TO ME). 

[fbusoni]

@gurlcat 

I just now remembered that I had an item returned to me.  A few months ago in fact... it was an expensive LP boxed set.   I attached signature receipt, and the buyer knew that in advance.

I saw on tracking after 10 days that he never picked it up at the post office.   I checked 10 days later and USPS said it was being returned to me.  Never heard one peep from the buyer... it was as though he dropped off the face of the earth.   (His address was a nice place on the West Coast and he was an academic at a local university, so I figured he was real.)

I received it and for a moment debated whether I should let the buyer know, then decided to just refund his money as I did not want any trouble.  

I sold the set a few days later to another buyer.  

[onefootflipper]

I stick the item on what I call my "I don't know where I live shelf" and do nothing unless I am contacted.

Once something has been on that shelf a long time I generally relist it.

I think you would find very few big businesses would go out of their way to force you to take your money back for your own incompetence. Why should a 1 man operation be any different. 

Now for the details. I have never had anything worth more than $10 bounce back to me with no contact.  It is always trading cards and trinkets.  And every single time I have ever initiated contact myself I have always found myself worse off.  The buyer always expects me to reship it at my own expense or give them a full refund and a few even gave me negative feedback for "shipping to the wrong address." 

[john_wade · Accepted solution]

The most unethical scam is allowing deadbeat buyers to beat down on good sellers with negative feedback and all kinds of lies. No wonder many sellers are talking off. 

[gurlcat]

I'm surprised a certain someone hasn't piped up here, because when this topic came up before, they were chiding every single person who said they wouldn't just do an automatic refund, basically "You got your item back, so that is NOT YOUR MONEY, you have no right to keep it!" 

There is at least a surface logic to that, obviously.  And I should be clear about this -if the buyer DID contact me I would absolutely refund them even though eBay doesn't mandate it.  Well ... totally depending on the circumstances (as in, what that person had to say) ... I might fully refund the item's price OR issue like a 90% refund, with the other 10% as my restocking fee. 

Because here's the thing -I already listed, packed, and shipped the item once, so is my time completely worthless?   Also what about the roughly 10 days or however long between the item's initial sale and my ability to relist it, once it's back in my hands and inspected?  Say it was a pretty desirable item that sold quickly -then this whole time period was like an externally-imposed 'hold' before the (true) Day 1 of actually selling it and earning money on it. 

...... And for a buyer who didn't even see me as a person they should communicate something with?   In my view that's minimal ethical currency, definitely not too much to ask. 

Then there's this: Assume I fully agree that it's not my money, does that mean I should issue a refund without any solid reason to believe the buyer will get it back?  Is the buyer indeed still alive, still having the bank account used to make the purchase, and with an active eBay account through which to route the refund?  As one of the early repliers said, how could you know it wouldn't just be absorbed by eBay and go toward their "company picnic"?  😆 

[onefootflipper]

People who say it isn't our money need to look at it scaled way up.

Customer purchases a car from you for $20,000 and pays another $1500 to have it shipped to their house. You sign the vehicle over to the customer and ship the vehicle off.

For whatever reason the customer provided a completely invalid delivery address for the vehicle, not even the correct city. Guess what, they still own that vehicle. Someone, )it could be you, it could be the shipping company, might even be a freight terminal owner) may end up with physical custody of the vehicle, however it is the customer's responsibility to retrieve their vehicle at that point and if they don't then they have abandoned it and every state has laws to deal with that situation. Usually whoever is in possession will eventually gain title to it if the owner does not retrieve it.

Same thing with your customers who provide invalid addresses for their orders. They still own them when they bounce back to you, however it is now their responsibility to retrieve their property, not yours.  Eventually that property's ownership will go back to you, how long would vary by state.