another thing going on is if you sell something and the buyer collects the item and has paid by paypal there is no tracking nunber and he can say the item was not there and get his money back. without a tracking number the seller is not covered by paypal

A friend runs a small internet business selling electronics. A certain party purchased goods from Australia, they were in the US.

The suggested delivery time by air post being about 2 weeks. The purchaser denied receiving the goods. At the end of exactly two weeks the purchaser claimed a no delivery refund from Paypal who promptly debited the sellers account for the shipment. A complete loss. The purchaser continues to deny receiving the goods.

Were this an isolated event you could put it down to misadventure; it is not. It has happened several times. If a purchaser complains for any reason the refund is given and it is extremely difficult to get Paypal to look into the matter. I know the seller personally and I know him to be ethical and responsible.

My friend uses Australia Post I guess the equivalent to the British post office. They don't loose parcels. Dealing over the internet is not for the feint hearted.

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 18/11/2015 14:52:14

There is a very easy answer to that John Mc. Only send items by a method that includes proof of delivery. Lots don't and fortunately as there are few people about that will take advantage mostly get away with it. I'm glad of that as I am an honest buyer and it keeps the costs down but increasingly people selling more expensive items insist on it being tracked. Can't say as I blame them. I often buy from the USA.

Personally when buying privately I much prefer paypal and having caught a cold a couple of times wont use bank transfer or paypal gift who ever is selling it. I also have mixed feelings about visiting and paying cash as what ever is bought it might turn out to be not as good as initial impressions suggest. I have bought a few things I don't use and wouldn't sell on for one reason or the other. It's a fact that there are more problematic sellers than buyers.

The difficult area with selling to other countries is insurance. On services that use the domestic mail provider it ceases to exist once the item has left the country. The only way round that is separate insurance or to use a carrier that operates in both countries.

John

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I sell quite a lot of stuff abroad through eBay and will only use RM tracked and signed-for service and will only accept PayPal in payment.

In many years I've only ever had one "item not received" complaint.

I responded to PayPal with a scan of the tracking proving it had reached him.

PayPal contacted the buyer and magically the item turned up the very next day!

Edited By Roger Provins 2 on 18/11/2015 18:27:19

As it was difficult to pack a digital height gauge and the buyer wasn't that far away I took it there and asked them to give me a note to say that they had received it, I had 2, the one I sold was way bigger than I need and hard to tuck away.

I do the same if some one collects from me at home as well.

One person defeated me some time ago. Sent me an empty jiffy bag with nothing in it that clearly had never been opened. I did manage to track him down via the web and certain services and did almost drive 150 miles to go and have a chat with him.

I have heard from people who sell microscope objectives that they send it and then get a return request because the buyer isn't very pleased with it and then find they get an identical one back but not the one they sent.

I bought a microscope once of some one that states no returns. It had a number of problems not shown in the photo's plus some others but listed as used. I had been warned to download the photo's in the listing and had so did the usual dispute thing. Obtained a phone number so that I could talk to him and when I did got a "don't you think you should ask if it's convenient to talk first comment" Then got told that it most definitely wasn't. There after the phone was never picked up until I rang from another number and then it was just put down at the other end. Eventually ebay/paypal sorted it out. He had changed the photo's that were shown in the listing, they keep track of changes. I eventually got an address to send it back to, not his registered address. Ebay told me that they were keen to get rid of sellers like this. He then added abuse aimed at me on all of his listings for months, I managed to get a couple of them taken down. Later I had an email off some one that had bought a car off him …………….. I helped as much as I could.

Maybe it pays to be wary of listings that have photo's on them not hosted by ebay but for all I know those could be changed anyway after the listing ends.

John

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I don't speak on behalf of the moderators, but it might have been better to post this in the new members section, as there have been a spate of old threads resurrected of late, and it is a bit of a sore subject.

Welcome to the forum by the way

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