If tracking shows the item delivered to the address she provided (yours), she will lose the case. USPS delivered to the address she said to, so there would be no reason for USPS to refund her money.
If she tries it again, you cannot legally keep it (even though that may be really tempting). It's actually a federal law, 18 U.S.C. §1703, so it applies across the country and supersedes any state laws. The relevant section:
"Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of newspapers not directed to him, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."
You could cross out the address & name, write "Return to Sender, Not at this Address" somewhere near the address, and drop it in a post box, or take it to a post office.
My guess is that she isn't probably going to try it again if she loses the claim, but you never know.
Good luck!
If she tries it again, you cannot legally keep it (even though that may be really tempting). It's actually a federal law, 18 U.S.C. §1703, so it applies across the country and supersedes any state laws. The relevant section:
"Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of newspapers not directed to him, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."
You could cross out the address & name, write "Return to Sender, Not at this Address" somewhere near the address, and drop it in a post box, or take it to a post office.
My guess is that she isn't probably going to try it again if she loses the claim, but you never know.
Good luck!
@pburn wrote:
Just want to emphasize a statement made by @nobody*s_perfect. Your "neighbor" will LOSE her claim that the item was not delivered properly. It WAS delivered to the exact address she provided when she purchased the item. That's what eBay and PayPal care about.
Anyone reading this thread and considering trying this failed scam should reconsider. It won't work. Find another way to cheat people.
WHOA... Back up the truck here. I have an idea that I know what's going on here, and it's not the neighbor (the buyer) who is pulling a scam here, but it could be the seller.
To begin with, an Item Not Received dispute does not take into account the exact street address, just the buyer's City and ZIP, so as noted above, the buyer cannot win an Item Not Received dispute by having it delivered two doors down. When the OP receives it, it's Delivered as far as eBay is concerned. There is no advantage to the buyer to do this.
The package that arrived was not described here, but if the buyer paid for a laptop and the OP received a lightweight trinket instead, the seller is pulling a fast one. It would be up to the buyer to say if what's in that package is what they actually ordered.
If it isn't, then this is the classic scam whereby a seller sells some high-value item on-line, but sends a worthless trinket to some other address within the same City and ZIP. That will fulfill proof of delivery as a defense against an INR dispute, and (unless the buyer gets nefariously creative 
) prevents any return as a Not As Described dispute, since the buyer did not actually receive anything for them to return.
The only slight flaw in this particular incident is that the neighbor's name remained on the label even though the package was getting sent someplace else. (I'm assuming here that the name on the label really is the buyer, and not just another local name found via Google.) Normally the scammer will address it to a fast-food place or other retail address where it will be accepted as part of the usual business mail.
So it might be a misaddressing scam, or just a dyslexic seller. It would be up to the buyer to say whether the contents of that misaddressed package were in fact what was supposed to arrive.
@pburn wrote:
I'd suggest you made quite a few assumptions in your scenario.
The fact that she came to pick it up from the OP makes me think she probably knew what was going on IMO...How else would she have known where to come looking for it?
@a_c_green wrote:
@*coins wrote:
@pburn wrote:
I'd suggest you made quite a few assumptions in your scenario.The fact that she came to pick it up from the OP makes me think she probably knew what was going on IMO...How else would she have known where to come looking for it?
Oh, yuck... Yes, I missed a key detail, so I read the whole thing wrong. The neighbor retrieved the package and then filed the claim (or INR dispute) several days later, so yes, it does sound like she thought she could get away with it. The PO has the GPS coordinates on where it actually went (and possibly its actual street address in their intranet records), and an INR dispute based on delivering the package three doors down wouldn't work anyway, as long as the OP's City and ZIP are the same as that of the buyer.
(She's claiming that she didn't receive the package at all, right? She's not claiming that it had the wrong item in it, is she?)
I read it as she had it shipped to the OP on purpose and then opened an INR (because she claims she shipped it to the wrong address). The funny part is that she provided the OP's address when she checked out, so she would lose an INR since it was delivered to the address she provided. That's what I got out of it and think is going on. 🙂
