Feel a little bad...what would you have done?

vicker

I sold an item for £50ish + £10 courier postage on my private seller account.

Item sent via courier - collected the purchase 5 days after being carded. He emailed to say the box had been knocked about a bit and he could hear things rattling about inside, and was quite concerned that the object might have broken.

3 weeks on, I get an email from the guy saying he's finally had time to check over the object and it is broken and not working. Not the sort of item you can fix, so wants a refund. I check out the courier claim process, and they have a 14 day limit on putting in a claim.

I tell buyer that I can no longer put in a claim, and buyer says he doesn't think the courier should be blamed as I must have packed it poorly (I didn't). Buyer wants a full refund. I refused. Buyer left neg.

Feel a little bad as £60 is a lot of money to write off, but had the buyer reported the breakage in a timely manner, I could have helped. Wouldn't have wanted to, but would have processed a claim. As buyer is new to ebay, I don't think he knew that he could have opened a Paypal claim and just lose his return postage costs.

Please tell me I'm not taking advantage of a new to ebay person... I feel a bit bad as I think I am taking advantage of their lack of knowledge. What would you have done?

soolin

Buyer has 45 days in which to open a claim with ebay or paypal. He has plenty of time yet to do so.

vicker

The way his neg reads, he's drawn a line under it.

ballisticbrian

If that's correct that you can only claim for 14 days, then the buyer hasn't helped this situation.

Just to say also, I sent an amplifier to Portugal, sent it with extra insurance, the guy kept insisting it was damaged because I hadn't packed well enough and he just wanted "a small amount" of money back and no insurance claim. Go figure.

ThinkingOfLinking

ballisticbrian wrote: »

If that's correct that you can only claim for 14 days, then the buyer hasn't helped this situation.

Just to say also, I sent an amplifier to Portugal, sent it with extra insurance, the guy kept insisting it was damaged because I hadn't packed well enough and he just wanted "a small amount" of money back and no insurance claim. Go figure.

Because he was at it!! No way would I have agreed to that.

Obviously_the_best

I would probably say that if he's had enough time to rattle it he's had enough time to quickly open the box with a knife and check. As far as I'm concerned, 3 weeks is not reporting damage in a timely matter. Annoyingly, PayPal disagree.

Contains_Mild_Peril

What would I have done? For starters, I wouldn't have posted about it on a popular public forum which for all we know he may be reading! Also, if I understand correctly he reported a suspicion that the contents may be broken shortly after he received the package? I would have asked him at that point to inspect it and detail any damage, and also to retain the packaging in order to return the item, unless it was something not covered for damage anyway (e.g. most couriers exclude anything with glass components and various other fragile items).

TrickyWicky

So it took him 3 weeks to discover that its broken? Unless its a gift for someone else, that seems unreal IMO. Even then most folk would open it and check before wrapping.

paddyrg

Get some photos of the damage so you can at the very least check its not a scam?