Buyer claiming item not received wants refund - Ebay postage used!!

[tmastermind]

Originally Posted by lucy

if the item your selling is less than £10 but the recorded signed for service is costing you £3.95 thats eating into your profit, plus ebay/paypal fees, thats a big hit

They should be a cheaper way to send signed for small/medium parcels with tracking

Safest way is to use recorded signed for as buyers seem to be saying items never arrived, least your covered with the tracking

Well yes that’s very true altho signed for service I think was £1.10 if I’m not mistaken on top of the standard postage it would cost to send through RM but your right that’s still an extra £1+ eating your profit which is why when I learned about the QR code system RM are now using (credit to tinsoldier for that one), I saw an extra saving!

In my case I now send about 70-75% as small parcel or larger and I don’t use RM much now I have a better tracked service I use for that and it’s far cheaper than RM. As for when I do use large letter most items I send are more than £10 and have a reasonable Profit margin to warrant the extra £1 for peace of mind.

[lucy]

Ebay postage charge
£2.95 to send small parcel
£3.95 to send small parcel signed for
£4.95 to send medium parcel signed for

QR codes cheaper and how do you get an account up, won’t your real details on Royal Mail site plus your number be shared/linked to eBay or Paypal

Do you physically enter the tracking number on eBay or is the QR code automatically sent to eBay?

[CaptainComedown]

About 2 months ago I got a load of phake tracking stickers with barcodes on them and started sticking them to all my items. It obviously doesn't provide any tracking but it deters the liars from pretending they haven't received it. I used to get 3 or 4 INR cases a month and since using the phake tracking stickers I think I have had 1 case in two months! Doesn't really help this situation of course, but its a cheap way to prevent future losses (my stickers cost around £5 for 500 of them)

[lucy]

Bit confused so am I ok to just let ebay do the refund or do I do the refund myself?

How do I claim for the missing item if the postage was done through eBay postage?

[DezRfc1]

Originally Posted by lucy

Bit confused so am I ok to just let ebay do the refund or do I do the refund myself?

How do I claim for the missing item if the postage was done through eBay postage?

You should be able to refund, if you go to open cases and "see request details"

The option to refund should be there.

[lucy]

Originally Posted by tinsoldier

You let ebay do the refund, they might refund it out of their own monies so it costs you nothing.

If they decide you must make the refund they'll take it out your paypal account and you can then make a claim with RM.

O.k will will do as you say :-)
Is there a link to RM to start the claim now

[CaptainComedown]

Originally Posted by tinsoldier

A popular tactic in days gone by but now almost unnecessary as QR codes are free. I suspect many buyers now are wise to the almost mandatory tracking expectation and some sit and wait to see if the QR code tracks - like I suspect OP has experienced.

That said, I still post a lot of cheap stuff on my Royal Mail online business account without any QR codes and don't see a great deal of losses. I suspect that on super cheap items many wanabee scammers simply can be bothered in 'wasting' as scam opportunity or simply can be bothered with the effort for a few quid.

I know I'm being pedantic but it is actually against RM's terms of carriage to apply bogus tracking labels.

Really? thats strange, the fella in the post office near me just laughed when he saw them, said it was a smart idea. I wonder why they don't allow it, especially when it does no harm really.

The QR codes are the 2d tracking system aren't they? AFAIK they are not applied to international shipping? I notice that the reference number doesn't appear on the Certificate of Postage receipt for international items, it only shows a ref for UK stuff and the fella in the Post Office said it doesn't apply to international. So really I bought them to prevent international shipping scams, although I just stick them on everything just in case.

The problem I have is that some of my items are for professional use, and require a bit of knowledge to use. Despite this I regularly have people who buy from me and then expect me to give them a free education to go with it. I noticed that most INR cases seemed to be linked to these items, because I suspect people buy them, can't figure out how to use them, and then pretend it didn't arrive to get a refund without having to make the effort to ship the item back. The other items I sell in other categories don't seem to have the same issues.

[lucy]

tinsolder - The buyer now has closed the request with the comment 'Seller insists refund will be processed '

So has the seller mistakenly misread what I sent - 'Apologies for Royal Mails failure Ebay will issue a full refund in due course'

and closed the request in error?

[Pathos]

They can't reopen on eBay.

But they can with PayPal..