eBay

vip-marketplace · ‎03-28-2015

Hey guys!

Lately I have had 3 buyers requesting that I ship their item to a different address than the one linked to their eBay's account.

Considering I have their message requesting this and the tracking number, I'm I at risk if I do it?

I have lost 3 high profit sales because I refused and I feel that maybe I should have accepted... :S

I'm very interested in what you guys think!

treasure.hunter.d · ‎03-28-2015

@vip-marketplace wrote:
Hey guys!

Lately I have had 3 buyers requesting that I ship their item to a different address than the one linked to their eBay's account.

Considering I have their message requesting this and the tracking number, I'm I at risk if I do it?

I have lost 3 high profit sales because I refused and I feel that maybe I should have accepted... :S

I'm very interested in what you guys think!

Hi there,

I have had this exact same issue on several occasions.

Not wanting to lose a sale but at the same time not wanting to put myself at risk, and not knowing what to do I called Ebay and PayPal both to see what my options were.

The bottom line is that if you ship to any address other than what is specified in the transaction details you have absolutely no seller protection from Ebay or PayPal.

The solution is to politely explain this to your buyer and request that they add the address to their file (you can have multiple shipping addresses on file), then cancel the sale, relist it for them to re-purchase with the new address specified as the shipping address. It takes all of about 5 minutes to do once you have explained it to your buyer.

My view on it was/is that if the buyer refuses this small bit of effort, where you are basically doing all of the work and he has to make 2 or 3 clicks to comply, then there was probably something fishy afoot anyhow and you are better off without them,. Just my opinion on that part but really, handled politely, who isn't going to comply with this in order to keep the Ebay/PayPal folks happy and you out of risk.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

thD

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-28-2015

If they haven't paid yet, they can change their primary shipping address in ebay or I believe that they can also change the address at the time of payment.

If they have paid and you are using tracking, the rules state that you must ship to the shipping address you are given when the transaction is paid for. If you are not using tracking, you are not covered by seller protection anyway so it can't hurt to ship to a different address.

Apparently one of the ebay reps on the U.S. weekly board has said that if the buyer requests the address change in ebay messages, then you will be covered...however...since he isn't the one making that decision, I wouldn't count on that.

Bottom line....I have always shipped to a buyers requested address (unless it's in Nigeria lol) and haven't had a problem. I think that you have to use your own judgement depending on the situation. If you tend to have a lot of problem buyers, then you might want to do things differently.

recped · ‎03-28-2015

I ship anywhere a buyer asks and I really don't care how they request the change!

If I cared at all I would only care about the PayPal address which can often be different than the eBay registered address.

"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.

reallynicestamps · ‎03-28-2015

You are selling in a high value/high fraud category (electronics-- Bose speakers, gamer equipment, model cars, etc.).

I would not ship unless the buyer puts the destination address in his Paypal account.

Tracking and air mail go without saying.

dacoca3 · ‎05-12-2017

How would you handle this?

The buyer's shipping address in the email from eBay identifying the buyer who won the auction is in Texas, so you give him a shipping cost based upon that. He pays you the total amount, including shipping, but the address in the PP email is in Thailand...a much higher shipping cost (I'm in Canada).

cumos55 · ‎05-12-2017

Buyer had paid and asked me to ship to an address other than the address indicated on Paypal.

Payment was refunded. A Paypal invoice was sent with the new address on record on the invoice...

Buyer paid the Paypal invoice and item was shipped to the new address.

The critical part on this transaction is to put a full record on eBay indicating what was happening.

....... indicating that the buyer paid and item was shipped to the new address.... New address was recorded, in the notes section, the section presented as notes to the buyer, on the eBay sales record for this transaction

Sometimes a buyer will do just about anything..... In my situation buyer questioned what was happening but did follow my instructions.

My response to the buyer was that I had to ship the purchased item to the address on Paypal for this transaction.

Once a Primary Shipping Address is identified on eBay, before a purchase is made, this address becomes the address on Paypal.

The address for a transaction on Paypal cannot be changed

Shipping to the address on Paypal protects a seller from a scam.

cumos55 · ‎05-12-2017

If someone makes a purchase and then asks you to ship to a country... listed as a ... Do not ship to country .....you as the seller can cancel the transaction using problems with the address as the reason to make the cancellation.

A seller must always ship to the address on Paypal.... This protects the seller from a scam or any other action dreamed up by a buyer.

cumos55 · ‎05-12-2017

It is always most important to communicate with the buyer using eBay Messages....

This becomes a record that anyone on eBay can see.

In today's world using eBay messages is most critical.... and even more so with the selling of items in high scam categories

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-13-2017

First... it would be a good idea to limit your shipping to Canada and to the US until you have more selling experience here.

The way that it should work is that you have shipping costs set up in your listing and then when a buyer makes the purchase, you do not need to send an invoice as the buyer will pay the shipping cost to the shipping address that they are using. So even if the buyer had a US address as his primary address on ebay, when he paid with a Thailand address, the amount that you had listed in the listing for shipping to Thailand would be automatically added in. In this situation, it looks like the US shipping is either not set up at all or there is a problem with the set up as the listings show US shipping as cost not specified. There is no shipping showing for Thailand either but even if there was, once you send an invoice and put in a shipping cost, that overwrites the cost in the listing.

What to do....honestly I'm not sure how I would handle this. I might phone ebay customer service which I rarely do and would ask them if you can cancel the transaction using problem with address as the reason without being penalized by ebay. Then you could write the buyer to apologize for the mistake with the shipping cost and politely explain that the cost you gave him was for the US shipping address that was shown when he made the purchase and that the cost for shipping to Thailand will be $XX. Tell him that you will cancel the transaction and refund his payment and that if he wants to he can purchase the item again with the address that he wants it sent to and with the correct shipping cost. I realize that the original sale was an auction but you could set up a new listing as a fixed price listing with his winning bid as the buy it now price. If you go this route, make sure you do use problem with buyers address as a reason for the cancellation and do the refund and cancellation through ebay.

Or.....what did you charge the buyer for shipping and what did the buyer pay? You have tracked packet set up for some countries so if you charged the buyer for tracked packet to the US, you could send the item to Thailand with small packet depending on the weight of the package.Small packet does not have tracking so if your item is one of the LP's over $100 you might want to buy insurance through a 3rd party insurance company such as insurepost. If you go that route make sure that you get a receipt at the post office for proof of shipping in case you do have to make a claim.

I do think that most people are honest even without tracking but this situation worries me a bit as I don't know if the buyer knew that you were charging him for US shipping and is taking advantage or if he just didn't realize which address you were seeing.

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-13-2017

To clarify, the situation that cumos is describing is different than yours since the buyer is not asking you to ship to an address different than the payment address.

You need to figure out why there is no shipping costs showing to the U.S. What service are you specifying and what are the dimensions and weight that you entered? The problem could be that your dimensions don't meet the minimum requirements for that service or that you just specified a international service and not a US service.

Note that Canada Post only has tracked packet to certain countries so many of the countries do not show a shipping cost on your listings. If you must have tracking, you need to specify worldwide shipping with both tracked packet and xpresspost.

For some of your less expensive items you might want to consider using services without tracking. Less expensive shipping may help to sell more however there is a risk that the item may get lost and/or that the buyer will claim they didn't receive the item. Many Canadians do ship without tracking as they feel the risk is minimal but each seller has to decide that for themselves. That's one reason why it is a good idea to limit your shipping to North America at first.

Sorry for the long replies but there is a lot to learn about shipping when selling here.

reallynicestamps · ‎05-13-2017

the buyer who won the auction is in Texas, so you give him a shipping cost based upon that. He pays you the total amount, including shipping, but the address in the PP email is in Thailand..

For this situation, you should ask the buyer if he is using a Texas based Freight Forwarding service.

These are not uncommon for customers in Asia, South America and the Caribbean.

The seller ships to the US address and his responsibilty for the shipping ends.

The Freight Forwarder sends the shipment on to the customer overseas, sometimes handling import fees as part of the deal.

This is actually sort of what happends with the badly designed Global Shipping Program, except that with the GSP it is the seller who chose a freight forwarder not the buyer.

Anonymous · ‎05-13-2017

It happened to me so many lately the last 5 months and all I can do is to tell them I am sorry but I only can ship to address that provided by PayPal. Some of them really insisted and I told them to include the different address in their PayPal profile and they just gave up. So something is fishy there. We have to protect ourselves even we may lose the potential sales.

brettjet38 · ‎05-19-2017

I had the same thing a Buyer with a US account and address, wanting me to ship to a Canadian address.

I said the same thing add a ship to address to your account and I will ship anywhere you want, but I will not ship to any address not listed in the ebay or Paypal account, otherwise I am not protected.

Better safe than sorry, nowadays.