How do I handle a potential reshipper?

[redterror117]

Hi there. I have a customer who recently purchased an item from me to be shipped to a US address. However upon looking into the address, it turns out that it belongs to a reshipping company that provides intermediary services for Russian customers. I also found some results suggesting that it's a scam, as buyers leave INR / INAD cases.

For my specific situation, the item is being shipped with tracking (Canada Post Tracked Packet). What is eBay's current policy regarding reshippers in this case? If I decide that I need to cancel the transaction, does the buyer need to confirm that the address is for reshipping for it to be valid for cancellation (to claim that something is wrong with the buyer's address)?

[reallynicestamps · Accepted solution]

Freight forwarders are the second safest addresses you can ship to.*

Most of the bad things you hear about them can be put down to US paranoia and xenophobia.

Once accepted by the forwarder, whether it is a company or Auntie Ludmilla in NYC, most of the Money Back Guarantee is void.

EBay's own "freight forwarder" is called the Global Shipping Program. While there are many complaints about it from buyers, shippers love it because of their strong protection under the GSP.

*The safest are post office boxes. American sellers often refuse to ship to those too.

[redterror117 · Accepted solution]

For sure, I have no issues with freight forwarders as I'm familiar with the service. In this specific instance however, the first result I get from the address online is an eBay thread from last year which list this specific address in a number of incidents involving false SNAD claims being filed and buyers sending back different items.

[marnotom! · Accepted solution]

How old is that thread? It may be from before eBay modified the Money Back Guarantee to specifically exclude forwarding agents.

[pjcdn2005 · Accepted solution]

The only 'new' change in that respect is more of a negative than a positive. As long as I can remember the MBG has specified that the seller wasn't responsible for a not as described claim if the item had been forwarded. For an item not received claim sellers are just responsible for showing delivery to the payment address which would be to the forwarder. But in the last year or so, the ebay reps have clarified that when there is a ‘not as described’ complaint, that the buyer wouldn’t automatically be excluded from buyer protection unless there was proof that the item really was forwarded.

I don’t know if ebay is always requiring that there be proof… perhaps there are exceptions but in the cases that I've read about recently the seller has accepted the return and yes, some returns are not what was originally sent. It does seem to happen more often in specific categories such as electronics and with forwarders who cater to eastern Europeans. But to be fair, sellers who had a good experience with those forwarders are not going to write about it which means we just hear about the bad ones.