Just to follow up on my pondering about whether INR-claiming buyers are lying versus freight forwarders keeping packages and pretending they didn't receive them, well at least in my one case I am now 99.9% sure my Kazakh buyer did receive his package and somehow heard about this 'new' way to scam. For one thing the fact that he waited over 2 full months to contact me doesn't compute; no matter how long he might usually wait for a package to arrive from the U.S. it can't be THAT long. But we also exchanged TWENTY-THREE messages last night, and it was pretty revealing.
The reason I was so willing to go back and forth was because 1. I felt I had the long end of the stick, considering I (unlike most sellers with this tracking scan) had ebay showing 'Delivered', not 'Shipped,' also 2. He had not filed an INR, so why not try as hard as possible to prevent that? and 3. I figured I might as well take the opportunity to see what information I could tease out of him, 'friendly detective'-style, by acting like I believed him and that I suspected his freight forwarder might have kept his package. What ensued was pretty amusing. --I would share it all but part of why it went 23 emails-long was because many of his replies were just 1-to-3-words, with 2 or 3 of these sent between my replies. Not sure how I would format the conversation for sharing here.
But here's some highlights: First he said he couldn't contact the forwarder. I asked why. "I just can not." At one point he showed me a screenshot of the USPS "agent for final delivery" code, despite how I had already made clear I knew "agent" meant the forwarder. But he still seemed convinced that the code was like a magic refund coupon, lol. I asked if the forwarder ever sent him tracking for the secondary shipping service. He replied that they never received the package to ship. I asked how he knew that. And here I will quote him directly: "I contacted them, they said the parcel was not delivered." But no, I didn't call him out about previously claiming he was not able to contact them. Instead I did some googling on the address, turns out all kinds of freight forwarders have (or have had) offices/warehouses in this big commercial complex on Cornell St. in Wilmington. I picked one, asked him if they ('Global Shopaholics') were his forwarder. He said no, that his had a different suite number. That's when I noticed his shipping address didn't even include a suite number. But I didn't call him out on that either. I asked who his forwarder was (and heck yes I was planning to contact them but didn't say so). He replied "Shipper." I ship you not, LOL. I said he really needed to contact them because they must have his package and were lying about never receiving it. His final reply: "It's complicated."
No, it's not really. But it's funny.
