Problem with buyers claiming non receipt

[kathemmi]

I was contacted recently by an ebay member about a problem they had with a buyer who claimed a refund for non receipt, asking if I also had a problem.
To cut a long story short, both I & the guy who contact me sell low value items (around £2 - £5) making tracked delivery too expensive.
He has also contacted a number of other ebay members who report the same problem with this buyer.
He seems to buy low value items & when they turn up without any tracking info he claims non receipt & requests a refund which is actioned by either the seller or through ebay,paypal. He also seems to leave more negative than positive feedback on his purchases.

1. What if anything can we do about this buyer (have alraedy blocked him on our account)?
2. Is this a common problem?

We sell about 300 odd small value items on ebay and get claims for non delivery on about 5-7%, which is much higher than Royal Mails stated loss rates, which we either replace or refund as a matter of course.

[NoneOther]

You've done what you can bar reporting him to e/b

Other than that you may need to rethink your business model and incorporate tracking otherwise you will get stiffed time and time again. Every business model should have "losses" built in to your projections.

e/b don't care, if you don't send tracked then as far as they are concerned thats tough

300 x £5 = £1500 x 7% = £105

300 x £0.77 (fee for recorded delivery) =£231

Charge an extra £0.50 on item cost or postage and you come out with £24 more profit and no claims for no receipt

And that doesn't take into account the lost postage costs.

[kathemmi]

Thanks noneother. Had crossed my mind to send top of our price range items recorded & take our chances on the lower priced ones.
Just wish we had chance to leave neg feedback on buyers.
just wonder how common this is on ebay

[NoneOther]

Its very common with sellers who don't send tracked

[Killuminati]

I always send my items tracked recorded no matter how low the value of the items are.

I don't want to be scammed by a buyer

[FrankR]

Originally Posted by NoneOther

You've done what you can bar reporting him to e/b

Other than that you may need to rethink your business model and incorporate tracking otherwise you will get stiffed time and time again. Every business model should have "losses" built in to your projections.

e/b don't care, if you don't send tracked then as far as they are concerned thats tough

300 x £5 = £1500 x 7% = £105

300 x £0.77 (fee for recorded delivery) =£231

Charge an extra £0.50 on item cost or postage and you come out with £24 more profit and no claims for no receipt

And that doesn't take into account the lost postage costs.

Surely the £105 isn't being lost though since it can all be claimed back off of royal mail. Only the postage cost would be a loss which i think they don't pay out for.

But even then, putting free postage (if not already) and adding the postage cost onto the item would eliminate that loss to, I think that’s how they handle compensation anyway. I never bother claiming for small amounts, but I don't 'lose' a high as a % as you have. Wouldn't bother with recorded unless it’s over the compensation limit (£46?) or your in early days on the account with any holds etc.

Your not going to be able to do much about these type of people with no tracking though. If its filed no receipt on ebay/paypal, going to have to refund/replace. If its just a message/email then you can try responding with "Royal Mail doesn't consider any mail lost until 15 days have passed etc etc" and hope they forgot about it and not bother pursuing it to non receipt of goods.

[NoneOther]

What you say is true to a point but the loss is not really the real issue, as you say this can be recovered in many ways.

The real issue is how abuse by buyers effects your reputation with e/b i.e. every non receipt claim is a mark against your account and repeated marks can and eventually will result in neg fb and low dsr.

We all know what that leads to.

The ONLY way to protect your income and more importantly account is to send item tracked regardless of cost of the actual item.

[310sfg]

I was told by paypal yesterday that if the same buyer has repeat claims of non receipt they take a look at that and could favor and side with the seller. You have to call and get them to look at the buyers account. Paypal investigates it and emails you with their decision, may be worth a try?

[NoneOther]

To avoid as many problems from buyers as possible it is wise to eradicate the probable causes of those problem before starting to sell.

By sending tracked mail you eradicate several potential problems i.e item not received cases being opened which could also lead to neg fb and low dsr's. Get too many of these and you end up with selling restrictions and eventually account limitation.

e/b's performance standards become a self tightening noose once your dsr's start to take a hit, they will choke you.

In my book it is worth a few pennies extra shipping cost per item to avoid those issues.

Clearly stating in your listings that you use only tracked delivery will deter the rip off merchants and scammers.

As my signature says................

[NoneOther]

Originally Posted by FrankR

Surely the £105 isn't being lost though since it can all be claimed back off of royal mail. Only the postage cost would be a loss which i think they don't pay out for.

Royal Mail only compensate the cost price of any lost item not the full retail value.

Also before they reimburse they will contact the recipient asking them to confirm non receipt and if the recipient does not confirm then they do not compensate the loss.

The likelihood of the recipient confirming this to RM is fairly slim because if they are habitually scamming e/b sellers they are not likely to highlight this to RM as false claims regarding mail carries heavy penalties.

[FrankR]

As part of the compensation form you have to include the ebay item number, printout of the auction page and print out of the paypal payment. They check your value on the form, with the value of buy it now/end auction price and compensate the final price (no postage though).

They rarely contact the buyer, I've never had them do so even for the max claims, but you already have written confirmation of non receipt to include with the form from the email/ebay/paypal claim aswell as the refund on the paypal transaction (which you have to include anyway).

I do see your point about the cases mounting up agaisnt you, I've never had a large number of these but I would imagine most if not all of them would start with a message rather than straight to case, which is easy enough to solve by refunding, then getting the compensation claim in.

[eBay King]

For a buyer to claim non receipt on £2 to £5 value goods just shows you what the world is coming to. These "people" have no respect for anybody and are very selfish and cheap.

A 5-7% lossed item rate is ridiculous, huge and clearly a sign that the "buyers" or "thieves" are scamming to the hilt.

I will tell you why. I have sent out over 1000 items recently. All 1st Class Recorded. And do you know what. NONE have gone missing. Hmm... I wonder why that is? Because it is tracked. Even I would have expected a few to go missing, but incredibly, NONE have gone missing!

So, based off of that, we are looking at a 100% delivery rate. Maximum loss rate on Royal Mail website states around 1%. Still too high for me though to consider, as the other 5-6% extra loss rate would come from the buyers or scammers, whatever you want to call them.

Instead of nothing going missing, I do however get the occasional buyer saying one of a range of excuses, like, "it is broken", "it does not work", "I don't like it", etc... But NEVER "it did not arrive". Trust me, when the buyer can not claim non delivery, they turn their attention to something else. Sick.

NoneOther is right on the money with this one. You need to spend the extra 77p to stop this madness continuing. It will cost you a lot of extra time doing everything recorded, but at least you don't then have to listen and entertain the blatant lies these "buyers" spit out.

The online selling game is full of low lifes who ruin it for the rest.

[oompaloompa]

I reported this to ebay the last time it happened to me.

The buyer went NARU shortly after, so it was either my case or another one they did that took them down,.

If they keep doing it they get canned, no idea how many they have to do, depends how many reports. That is why you ought to report them. I have had an occasional sneeky private email saying not received, I get the feeling they do not want to be seen by ebay doing it, hard to tell if they are just honest or serial...

Most items arrive and are fine, the loss should in theory not stop you profiting, but if it does a re-think is necessary, you might be being targeted for some reason. I would say I get like 1%? It is part of business

[NoneOther]

Originally Posted by FrankR

I do see your point about the cases mounting up agaisnt you, I've never had a large number of these but I would imagine most if not all of them would start with a message rather than straight to case, which is easy enough to solve by refunding, then getting the compensation claim in.

e/b still record these even though they are not 'visible' strikes against your account they still have an effect on how they will let you operate e.g. selling limits/brand limits etc.