Advice regarding buyer who says they haven't received my parcel...

[tomstone607]

Hey, I'm a new PowerSeller (woohoo!) and I've surprisingly only had 2 or 3 problem buyers in my 6 months selling on eBay. But of course, I knew that I was bound to come across a bad apple. Here's the deal: Someone purchased a large amount of items from me through one of my auctions. These are expensive items, so I offer insurance as an optional charge. However, this person didn't seem to want to pay or contact me. I then filed an Unpaid Item Dispute (the old system was so much more effective). The buyer decided to pay me for the items after 3 weeks of being on the Unpaid Item Dispute list. So I got the payment, and shipped the items WITHOUT insurance, because it wasn't paid for!

Four weeks later now, this person has emailed me claiming the package hasn't arrived. Normally I would offer a full refund on the item, HOWEVER this is a $500+ transaction. I also offered insurance, and here's the quote from my auction: "You'll probably be getting some GREAT costly cards from me... so why not insure your package? Any items that are shipped out WITHOUT insurance will be out of my hands!!! I do NOT provide any guarantee on uninsured packages!!! If you do get insurance, then you will be guaranteed to get your money back 100% if your package doesn't arrive." I clearly try to persuade buyers to opt into the insurance option, but this person did not.

What do I do?

BTW - I just checked, and this person is no longer a Registered User. I think the answer is quite obvious now. Can this person complain about me to eBay? Can I be held responsible for this?

Look forward to your replies.

[whoscloset]

I'm not going to get into mud slinging here...it's not productive. I will say that I have NEVER even bothered to look at whether people are shipping to confirmed addresses. P.O. Boxes are fine within Canada as I use Canada Post, but I request an actual address in the U.S. only because UPS can not ship to a P.O. Box. I also regularly ship to third parties as gifts or to people who would rather receive their items at work.

In 4 years of following this policy I've only ever been scammed once. That's a hell of a lot better a "shrinkage" rate than my sister, the owner of a large B & M retail establishment, has.

Doing business on-line is just that...DOING BUSINESS. If you treat it like a business you'll be much more successful than if you panic over every irritable customer or rip-off artist as though it was some sort of personal affront.

Am I telling you to ship $6000.00 worth of computers to the U.K. based on a money order that your bank is questioning? No! But don't go overboard and jump to the conclusion that 75% of buyers requesting an unconfirmed address or P.O. Box are fraudulent.

JMHO
Monique

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