sending to po box addresses

pinkgem

a buyer with 2 feedback paid me £50 plus postage for an item on saturday 24th, they had a confirmed po box address. my postage options were £4.95 for courier or £6.95 for special delivery. they paid £4.95 for courier.

on sunday 25th i booked a courier collection for monday 26th but i have since found out that the courier won't delivery to a po box address, i presume this is because they won't be able to obtain a signature.

so really i need to either get the buyer to pay again by paypal with a different confirmed address or to pay by another method and i can send to whatever address they want except for a po box address.

i emailed the buyer on monday to tell them i could not send to the po box address, i emailed them again on tuesday through ebay and to their email address but i have had no response. I have also requested their contact details from ebay and called the mobile number, that i was supplied with, numerous times over the last 3 days but it does not ring and just says that the person is not available. i don't know if this means their mobile is off/no reception if the number does not work and is not really their number.

i considered paying the extra and sending by special delivery but i presume the royal mail would also not be able to obtain a signature from a po box address.

the address consists of 2 company names, then the po box number, town, county and postcode so i can't leave out the po box number because their is no building number or name and no street name.

i did contact ebay yesterday (no, i don't know why i bothered) and they said something like check their contact details again in 2 days to see if they have updated them which is probably not going to happen and wasn't really very helpful.

i don't really know what to do as i have their money and i have their item here packaged up and ready to be sent but i can't deliver it to the address they supplied and i can't deliver to any other address at the moment as the po box address is the confirmed address i have to send to to be protected by paypals seller protection.

what would you do? what else can i do?

pinkgem

oops i duplicated my original thread and then somehow managed to delete both of them so i have started it again.

i was wondering, since the address is confirmed and i am eligible for paypal seller protection can i send by special delivery and be covered as long as someone signs for it?

Baby_J_2

I have sent items Special Delivery to PO Box addresses before and had no problems.

pinkgem

i phoned royal mail and they said it was fine to send to a po box address

i also googled the company name which is the same as the persons name who paid and found their address and a landline phone number

ideally i would like them to pay the extra for the additional cost of sending by special delivery

pinkgem

well i just phoned the person and told them what the problem was, he said his daughter had been asking him where the item was

he just said to send to a different address by courier

i said i can't as i have to send to the confirmed address in the paypal payment

he said that i could just send to a different address and that he had 300 feedback, but the account he used has only 2 feedback, then he said thats his sons account and he was trying to build his feedback up for him

i eventually managed to get through to him that he had to pay again, he said he would with a different address, i asked if it was confirmed and he said yes of course

so anyway have refunded and will await payment from another address, bet its not confirmed

paypal is a pain in the **** sometimes. now the buyer probably thinks i'm being unnecassarily awkward

Snooze_Control

I use a confirmed PO Box address myself for buying items and it has caused problems in the past receiving items that require a signature. The reason you don't have any problem with Royal Mail ones are that they leave you a card in your box alerting you to a parcel for you or whatever and then once you've picked up your letters and closed your PO Box you just go to the desk and ask for your parcel and you sign for it there, job done.

Other non-Royal Mail couriers obviously can't do this hence why they won't send to a PO Box. The way I get round this is by instructing the seller to address it to me but leave at my local depot for collection. I did have a few problems with CityLink to begin with but now they're fine about it. I also had a **** of a job trying to get ScrewFix to deliver a £700 order and spent the best part of half an hour on the phone answering stupid questions from their fraud department, but now it's all sorted.

SC

C_Ronaldo

pinkgem wrote:

well i just phoned the person and told them what the problem was, he said his daughter had been asking him where the item was

he just said to send to a different address by courier

i said i can't as i have to send to the confirmed address in the paypal payment

he said that i could just send to a different address and that he had 300 feedback, but the account he used has only 2 feedback, then he said thats his sons account and he was trying to build his feedback up for him

i eventually managed to get through to him that he had to pay again, he said he would with a different address, i asked if it was confirmed and he said yes of course

so anyway have refunded and will await payment from another address, bet its not confirmed

paypal is a pain in the **** sometimes. now the buyer probably thinks i'm being unnecassarily awkward

i dont think u were being awkward, its normal to do what you did, has the parcel arrived ok at the destination