Help when buyer sends you the wrong address

[oldhousejunk]

Buyer paid, I mailed this morning. No tracking from canada to us. Sent buyer photo of package who replied that it was not her correct address, and gave me the update.  Its already sent and address on all invoices from her had been the one I used.   Not going to ask my post office to hunt through the huge pile of packages for her box so it can be changed. Do I just chalk this one up as another loss? (and use my cookie jar insurance as you often suggest?)  It was around $70)

Thank you for advice!!! 🙂  

[reallynicestamps]

Possible scenarios:

She's telling the truth.

The package arrives at the wrong address, is refused, and very slowly makes its way back to you.

• Undeliverable shipments are not required by eBay to be refunded.

The item is not tracked, so eBay would in a Dispute, require you to refund the buyer.

She is lying or mistaken.

The item is not tracked, so eBay would in a Dispute, require you to refund the buyer.

Your best bet is to advise the buyer to get in touch with the new tenant and ask to be informed when it arrives.

Assume you are going to be refunding the buyer, but don't do it outside of a Dispute which keeps all the information on eBay's radar.

And .

Photographing the label would do nothing in a dispute.

Neither eBay nor Paypal will accept anything other than electronic proof of Delivery (not shipping Delivery)

It is possible that sending the picture encouraged a sketchy buyer to realize that she could get it free by telling you it did not arrive.

Cookie Jar.

But AFTER the Dispute is filed.

[oldhousejunk]

Thankyou for your help! And just for information, I went to the post office (small town ) to see if I could retract the package and post on it the new address. They said legally, they can not do that, so that was interesting. Thanks for your help

[reallynicestamps]

Apparently USPS will do that , but only on tracked shipments.

[a52split]

You should have sweet-talked better.

I once stood by the red box on the street corner at about the time the posty comes to empty it. When he arrived, I had my ID in hand and asked if I could have a package back.  I pointed to it in the bin, then he quickly verified I was the return address and gave it to me.

IMO, taking a photo and sending that to the buyer is a very bad idea. It shows every buyer that you send without tracking.

[a52split]

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@oldhousejunk wrote:
.... retract the package and post on it the new address. 

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This was the wrong thing to do. Your intention should have been to get the package back, then cancel the sale.  You only ship it to the new address after the buyer updates their ebay and PP verified shipping address.

[marnotom!]

I try to avoid "dogpiling" on discussion boards, particularly as you've already received some excellent advice, but I feel I have to underscore the point that sending the buyer a photograph of the package pre-mailing--tracked or untracked--serves no purpose.  Buyers file disputes because they haven't received their items; they're called "item not received" claims, not "item not sent".  

For the purposes of a claim like this, you need to provide satisfactory online viewable evidence that the item was received at the address in the eBay transaction details page.  The PayPal address doesn't matter and will become even less relevant once we're all aboard the good ship Managed Payments.

The only circumstance where proof that the item was sent to the proper address would be useful would be in the event of an authorized charge claim of some sort, and I'm not sure a photograph would be useful for that because it would be impossible for some sort of unequivocal link to be established between the photograph and the transaction in question.