Item lost in mail for a week, refunded, found and delivered. Radio silence from buyer

[atpreacher87]

I'm a relatively new seller to ebay, and not sure how to deal with this situation:

I sold item for about 70 bucks 3 weeks ago. I dropped off the package for USPS, and they proceeded to lose it for a week. After about 5 days with no shipping update, the buyer opened a case with ebay asking for a refund. I granted the refund the same day he asked for it, thinking it would be unlikely for the package to turn up, and also that it would help my feedback rating (in hindsight I should have waited a few days). The package re-appeared in USPS's tracking system 2 days later, and was delivered 2 days after that. Since the refund had already been granted, I sent a message to the buyer asking if he wanted to keep the item, in which case he should please pay the winning auction price, or let me know if he no longer wanted it, in which case I'd send him a shipping label to return the item. I haven't heard from the buyer since granting the refund, despite sending several messages. 

I called ebay customer service, and was pretty much told I was out of luck if I wanted to force the guy to give them money back--the best they could do was send a message to them asking for payment. They also said I could report the buyer for abuse of the refund policy. Are these really my only options? I googled this issue before writing this post, and no other thread mentioned reporting the buyer for this sort of behavior.  

One weird thing: on my seller hub page, the item appears as eligible for an upaid item cases, but when I try to send the notification, it fails, with no reason given. Don't know if this means anything but figured I'd make a note of it. 

[a_c_green]

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@atpreacher87 wrote:

The package got lost before it was in USPS's system, so there wasn't even an estimated delivery date.

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I'm confused; what do you mean by "before it was in USPS's system"? Did you forget to mail it? Assuming you did mail it, was it placed in a drop box, or handed over the counter? What do you see for tracking entries?

[atpreacher87]

The package wasn't scanned when it was picked up, and didn't get scanned until it arrived in the post office about a week later. I know it was definitely picked up because it was no longer in the outgoing mail box a couple days after I dropped it off. 

What my front desk thinks happend (I live in an apt. building with daily USPS/Fedex/UPS pickup/dropoff) is that one of the USPS private contractors that does delivery for Amazon on Sunday picked it up, and then it just sat in that person's possession for a week or so before being turned over to the post office and finally appearing in the tracking system. Another lesson from this experience: don't drop stuff off at my front desk

[missjen831]

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@atpreacher87 wrote:

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@missjen831 wrote:

It wasn’t abuse of the refund policy. The buyer can only open an INR once the latest delivery estimate has passed. He didn’t abuse the policy here. He used the protections eBay made available to him. You did not need to jump the gun and issue a refund. You had 3 full business days to refund or prove delivery before he could have asked eBay to step in. What you needed to do was call and get the case put on a hold to allow more time for delivery. 

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I'm still a little unlcear on whether my buyer has acted in a manner that merits reporint to Ebay.  Did he violate the refund policy or not? Even if he didn't violate any specific ebay policy, he certainly acted in bad faith and I'd like to know the best way to tell ebay/other ebay users about it. 

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@atpreacher87 He didn’t violate any eBay policy so if you report him, nothing will come if it, it won’t go on his record. You can’t name and shame him here or leave him a negative feedback comment. The bottom line is, you jumped the gun. You should have waited until the 3rd business day before you took action. Had you waited, you could have contacted eBay on day 3 and asked for the case to be put on hold. However since you got a late acceptance scan, they may not have been willing to do that. I wouldn’t report the buyer. You are responsible for what happened after the package was picked up. He should absolutely repay or send the item back but there is no mechanism in place for eBay or PayPal to force him to do that. And again he didn’t violate policy. The latest delivery estimate comes from eBay not the carrier. He could not have filed the INR unless ebays latest delivery estimate had passed and honestly when he filed the case, you couldn’t prove you had shipped so what was he supposed to think?

[mathven-usa]

same thing happened to me

I kept sending paypal invoices everyday to his email address and direct emails to him. After 2 months or so of constant messages via paypal and to his email address, he paid the invoice. 

If this does not work you can report the buyer to his/her local police department 

[missjen831]

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@mathven-usa wrote:

same thing happened to me

I kept sending paypal invoices everyday to his email address and direct emails to him. After 2 months or so of constant messages via paypal and to his email address, he paid the invoice. 

If this does not work you can report the buyer to his/her local police department 

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That would be a false report which is a crime. The OP voluntarily refunded.

What he could do is sue the buyer. There was just a case like this on judge judy& the seller won. But the seller also didn't voluntarily refund so....

[atpreacher87]

So if he didn't violate the refund policy, do I have any form of recourse available other (ignoring the fact that it's not worth it to sue the guy) than just leaving a negative review? Would it even be wise to do so in my case? I just started selling on ebay about a year ago, so only have about 13 people who have left feedback, whereas this guy has over 4000. I'm worried if I leave a negative review he'll just do the same for me, and since I have so much less feedback it'll hurt me much more than him. 

[missjen831]

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@atpreacher87 wrote:

So if he didn't violate the refund policy, do I have any form of recourse available other (ignoring the fact that it's not worth it to sue the guy) than just leaving a negative review? Would it even be wise to do so in my case? I just started selling on ebay about a year ago, so only have about 13 people who have left feedback, whereas this guy has over 4000. I'm worried if I leave a negative review he'll just do the same for me, and since I have so much less feedback it'll hurt me much more than him. 

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He didn’t violate the refund policy and you can’t leave him a negative review. Buyers can only get positive feedback and it’s been that way for 10 years. You have no recourse through eBay.

[lonewanderer1553]

There may be some reasonable doubt here. Even though the package somehow found its way back into active shipment and was delivered, the buyer might not have noticed or claimed the delivery yet, or may not be very proactive about reading or replying to eBay messages. It's entirely possible the buyer will eventually check in and realize what's happened, and then take it upon themselves to pursue an appropriate course of action such as honoring the second invoice.

But of course, I'm just playing devil's advocate. The buyer may very well be aware that the packaged arrived and they have every intention of not compensating you for it. I don't know. But I would at least give it a few more days and see if the buyer reaches out to you.

As for recourse, there's nothing you can do. You probably issued a refund too early. Since you did so voluntarily and presumably before the estimated delivery date, the case with the buyer is closed and that's that. Reporting the buyer would only result in the report being ignored since the buyer hasn't actually done anything to violate eBay policy.

As for feedback, sellers can only issue positive feedback to buyers, because the only responsibility the buyer has is to issue a payment to the seller. How can the issuing of payment possibly be a negative experience for the seller? Back when eBay allowed negative feedback to go both ways, sellers often abused the feature by leaving vengeful negative feedback to buyers who had the audacity to leave negative feedback to the sellers. In retrospect, it was absolutely a good idea for eBay to reform the feedback system the way it did.

[chocvanswirl]

Same thing is happening to me right now.  The buyer said they wanted it if found.  It was delivered on 5-04-19 and I've sent several messages and a paypal invoice and radio silence.  I agree with you, I should have waited longer and if it ever happens again, I will wait at least 10 business days before I issue a refund. Buyers girlfriend wrote me a almost 2 weeks ago saying buyer was in hospital after having a procedure and would pay me soon.  Still nothing. On this item and 1 other one, I had to open an Ebay case because payment was overdue each time from this buyer. First time in 10 years post office has lost a package on my sales. Ebay advised to report the buyer, which I did but, as with you, said there was nothing that they could do. 

[sfginsider]

This is NOT an abuse of the refund policy by the buyer. It’s simply the buyer taking advantage of a bad system and there’s no recourse for you. Not much you can do.