Hi everyone,
I’m new to eBay and recently I sold an iPhone 12 mini for $900 with the promise to ship ASAP (this was before Christmas).
Someone bought it that just joined this year and had only 2 feedback (though they were positive). I was a little worried to sell such a valuable item on eBay because I heard they side with buyers if there are any issues and I wasn’t thrilled about selling to someone new with limited feedback, but it’s my understanding that I had no other options if I wanted to remain in good standing with eBay.
I don’t want to make this too long of a post so let me briefly sum up the rest of this experience.
1. Buyer has not been easily accessible and didn’t pay for 4 days
2. Once I finally got in touch with them, I made sure to confirm their address and told them it needed to be exact b/c I was doing restrictive delivery. Once they finally responded, they confirmed.
3. I sent the item dec. 15th. On the 18th USPS attempted delivery with no success. ‘Addressee unknown’. I messaged the buyer twice telling them they needed to pick it up ASAP b/c I saw a ‘return to sender’ was being processed. No word.
4. last update was on dec. 21 where it was being processed in CA for return to sender and there has been no USPS update and no response from the buyer.
Can someone point me to the eBay policy that deals with this?
My friend said to hold the phone until I get a response and after a specific period of time, if I don’t hear anything, I’m no longer obligated to hold it, but I want to make sure this is correct.
I was also told on reddit that I can deduct the shipping on a refund but if the customer makes a big deal about it, I must refund that too b/c that’s eBay policy. That seems backwards to me though. How is it that eBay expects me to pay for the $20+ shipping when someone gives me the wrong address (or maybe USPS screwed up somehow) and then fails to respond to any messages??? Perhaps there was some sort of mix-up and I understand these things do happen but the fact they will not respond to messages is frustrating. My whole selling point was that I would ship ASAP in anticipation of christmas. Now not only is the premium for that gone but I have to pay 25% of the little profit I would have made (after eBay takes the bulk of it) towards shipping without ever having sold the phone?!
