The Perils of Shipping

[Bushmiller]

It may seem like a foolhardy decision of mine to forward the incorrectly sent goods to the intended buyer before receiving payment (and in retrospect it was), but the seller contacted me explaining that the parcels had been mixed up. This is not an unreasonable mistake and it seemed that he was trying to make amends.

On that basis, and to assist both him and the intended recipient, I organised the parcel to be forwarded after gaining his approval for the cost. Bear in mind I am doing this from Australia for a package going from California to Iowa. There has been no further contact. It is two weeks since I last heard and I have not received my purchase.

The best scenario I can imagine is that there has been a catastrophic event befallen the seller prohibiting him from responding, although I concede that would not be a good scenario for him. However, on reflection the tone of his last communications should have sent alarm bells.

In my last communication asking why he had not responded I finished by apologising if there were circumstances, of which I was unaware, that were preventing him contacting me. I accept, that people become ill for example.

I await developments.

Regards
Paul

[doug3030]

It may seem like a foolhardy decision of mine to forward the incorrectly sent goods to the intended buyer before receiving payment

Not sure that foolhardy is the right word. You are a good person and you try to see the good in others. Unfortunately, this time you might finish up out of pocket.

I used to be in business for myself. I did concrete garden edging. I never worried about getting people to sign contracts or anything like that. I worked on a handshake. I had no problems at all with this for seven years then some idiot let me down and cost me about $100 when he canceled a job after I had ordered the concrete colour (an unusual one that would be unlikely to be ordered again).

My initial thought was to change the way I worked and get people to sign legally binding contracts like all the other similar businesses were. Then I stopped and thought about it a bit more and decided to go on as I was and not change my way of doing business just for one Pr!@#. I never got burned again for the rest of the time I was in business, which was quite a few years until my back went out.

Paul, your situation is similar.
Could you have avoided this situation? Not entirely.
Could you be in a better situation if you did it differently? Possibly.
Do you want to change yourself due to the misdeeds of others? I hope not.

Cheers

Doug

[woodPixel]

Doug, perhaps you could have left the pile of concrete on the lawn? But then again $100 isnt such a bad thing.

Bushmiller, I think you are being too kind and too nice. Use the failbacks that Paypal have in place. Let the system do the work. The reason that vendors pay that 4% (or whatever) premium for fees is to act as a universal insurer against such scenarios.

Mr Seller may find a hard time selling on any eBay property from then on. That in itself will be a good motivation.

Additionally, once Paypal talks to eBay, they will know who Mr Scoundrel is who didn't forward your parcel. He may well find a hard time from then on too. Perhaps even a visit from the police.

I know this, for this same sort of thing happened to me. I buy antique tin robots. They are very expensive and hard to get. The seller (in the US) decided to ship some plastic rubbish and proceeded to double sell the item on ebay... he sold it twice. Now, he tried to claim it was a pair, or twin, but unfortunately for him they are not only gold-plated-hens-teeth rare, but the robot collecting community is tiny. He happened to sell it to a person I knew. I contacted Paypal who *eventually* refunded me - but importantly, they sicced a debt collector onto the seller.

When he claimed 19 fatal diseases, dementia for his mistakes/memory loss and the fact he was in outer mongolia at the time (all lies) they called the cops who dragged him into court.

I found out all this due to the prosecution needing the facts. Well, it didnt work out too well for Mr Fraudster as they literally stripped him of his assets to recover their money. The US seems to be pretty nasty with that kind of thing (but then again, he was a prick who deserved it).

A different situation to yours, for sure, but the violent end of Paypal isn't all love and light. They hire some serious leg breakers and don't take kindly to being ripped off.

All I can suggest is a level head, retention of all documents/emails/etc and an accurate chronology. Be simple, truthful and just wait. It will, eventually, be worked out in your favour.

[Bushmiller]

Doug

I like your philosophy. May I say it speaks volumes for the person you are too. At this stage I think it will make me lookmore closely at the feedback. Unfortunately that is not always the best guide either and unfortunately the way it is calculated can erase negativity quite quickly.

The seller concerned in this instance is new to Ebay only joining this year, but already with only a few feedbacks (14), and many of those as a buyer his rating was in the low 90% range and this was due to one negative reply ( goods did not arrive and Ebay police involved). What this has done already is make me look closely at other sellers.

Regards
Paul

[Bushmiller]

Woodpixel

I hear you and as I said the first stage of Ebay's involvement is in place. I have to wait four days to give the seller a chance to respond.

I had not appreciated that Ebay got as heavy as in your incident. I think your robot was worth a lot more than my saw .

Regards
paul

[woodPixel]

Sorry if I was ranty. He was a Red Faced Zoomer. Super mint. Super rare (there are but 3 I know of) and it was a sad affair all up. It burnt me a lot and my trust went down.

Its a shame this isn't an overall public score, ones Trust-o-meter. I'd suppose this is where Facebook might help somewhat.... ones public image is terribly important.

I hope your saw works out. Small things burn too much time.

[Simplicity]

Just read this on Facebook
And thought of Paul's issue

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1410...5254364803682/

Cheers Matt


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sawdust Maker]

strange

[Bushmiller]

Matt

I saw your post come in as I was on the phone to Ebay.

Almost needless to say I had not heard from the seller concerned. I lodged a complaint with Ebay's resolution centre for not receiving the goods and heard back within a couple of hours that it had be denied as the tracking history showed it had been delivered. I was ropeable and could not access any further complaints mechanism. Subsequent efforts to appeal the decision fell into a pile as I seemed unable to dial the number given, which was a US number. Finally after accessing the listing through my Australian Ebay account I found another "dial me" number.

This got me through to a lady called Marie, who was quite helpful and immediately accessed my dispute details. She said that she would have to escalate this to a higher department and I spoke with Lauren, who again was very helpful. She said that the sale would be refunded, but that the additional shipping with the incorrectly sent goods was out of Ebay's jurisdiction, which didn't surprise me. She was apologetic and advised she would have liked to have helped, but couldn't.

Finally she said she would forward the seller's telephone number and advise them to expect a call from me. I may be able to recoup my loss there, but am not hopeful. The call centre was apparently in the Philipines.

Lesson learned is to either send only when postage cost has been received or to return to the seller. To echo Doug's thoughts, the vast majority of people out there are both good and ethical. I have made some excellent acquaintances in the US through Ebay: As in really good, so I m not going to let one mongrel spoil that feeling.

Regards
Paul

[Simplicity]

Matt

I saw your post come in as I was on the phone to Ebay.

Almost needless to say I had not heard from the seller concerned. I lodged a complaint with Ebay's resolution centre for not receiving the goods and heard back within a couple of hours that it had be denied as the tracking history showed it had been delivered. I was ropeable and could not access any further complaints mechanism. Subsequent efforts to appeal the decision fell into a pile as I seemed unable to dial the number given, which was a US number. Finally after accessing the listing through my Australian Ebay account I found another "dial me" number.

This got me through to a lady called Marie, who was quite helpful and immediately accessed my dispute details. She said that she would have to escalate this to a higher department and I spoke with Lauren, who again was very helpful. She said that the sale would be refunded, but that the additional shipping with the incorrectly sent goods was out of Ebay's jurisdiction, which didn't surprise me. She was apologetic and advised she would have liked to have helped, but couldn't.

Finally she said she would forward the seller's telephone number and advise them to expect a call from me. I may be able to recoup my loss there, but am not hopeful. The call centre was apparently in the Philipines.

Lesson learned is to either send only when postage cost has been received or to return to the seller. To echo Doug's thoughts, the vast majority of people out there are both good and ethical. I have made some excellent acquaintances in the US through Ebay: As in really good, so I m not going to let one mongrel spoil that feeling.

Regards
Paul

Paul.
It's a shame that generally 95 percent of the world population are nice normal folks.
5 percent are compleat (insert expletives) and take 95 percent of our time sometimes.
Hence why we need laws unfortunately.
For the five percent.


Cheers Matt

[Bushmiller]

Hence why we need laws unfortunately.

Just on the subject of laws I was listening to Julian Burnside talking of the radio. He quoted some pomie judge who maintained that the doors of the legal system were always open to the general public in much the same way as the doors to the Savoy hotel were always open.

Regards
Paul

[woodPixel]

This is an old quote.

Personally I think thieves should be publically flogged to within 1% of their lives.

[Bushmiller]

The plot thickens a little. As I mentioned before, Ebay promised to refund my purchase priceincluding postage, which came to US$26.70. This has been done.
Then, after not hearing since 15 July, the seller contactedme yesterday as follows:
“9534611428027188027907 was the tracking number”
There was no pre-amble or explanation as to why he had remainedsilent for all this time and he had not replied to any of the emails I hadrecently sent.
I checked the tracking and found it had been delivered tothe shipping facility in Hawthorne, California. I contacted the facility bylive chat and explained the problem. I suspected that there was a problem witheither my name of the storage number and in that I was correct. The storage boxnumber was wrong so it had just sat there in limbo.
So now, because of the trouble I had experienced to date, Irequested a picture of the goods. I have seen it and verified that it is theitem I purchased. It looks like after all this after deducting the postageincurred for the re-posting of the other item, I now owe him US$7.00!
I have contacted him outlining the sequence of events andcommenting that the complete lack of communication was responsible for theescaltionof the dispute to the Ebay police.
Regards
Paul

[doug3030]

It looks like after all this after deducting the postageincurred for the re-posting of the other item, I now owe him US$7.00!

If I understand it correctly Paul, the extra cost of the postage also included shipping what you thought was your item to Milmerran. Now you have to organise to get the actual item you ordered shipped. Take his US$7 out of that postage cost and he probably still owes you money.

Cheers

Doug

[woodPixel]

An excellent outcome.

Do do the right thing. Karma.