Im faced with a absolute nightmare --please help ?

mateo_k

Hi wonder wether anyone can help.

Sold a mobile phone on ebay. 1st winning buyer realised i lives in uk so he pulled out. 2nd winning bidder resulted to be a nigerian scammer so I relisted under 2nd chance offer and someone finally won the phone in the uk. Great:j . Now then Buyer pays by paypal £65.00, I send phone 1st class recorded deliverey on Thurs 4.10.07 (Bare in mind this is when the postal strike is on) Buyer claimed last week still hadnt received phone so i said be patient cos of strike. To make things worse ive lost the ref number to track the parcel. My local post office reckon they dont keep ref details at all , 1st of all is this true? or are they just not trying hard enough for me? and also I remember they took my return home address and wrote it on the parcel but obviously nothing has been returned to me sooooo....... it does look as if the buyer may have had the phone anyway to make things worse he's opened a paypal dispute and paypal have kind of took the £65.00 out my paypal account leaving me with a negative balance , will paypal charge me for kind of looking like im overdrawn????

Any need these questions answering asap as it seems as if im going to loose the phone and the money.!!!!

By the way the post office can only put it down to the phone being in the backlog of post still but i smell something wrong.

Regards

Matt

duchy

I think you need to give it more time.
I sent an item recorded delivery from Kent on 3rd October and it was delivered the 18th in central London.
And yes they don't keep a record of special/recorded delivery items-that's why they give you the receipt. Half goes to you-the other half is on the package. You need to find your receipt and track it on the Royal Mail site.

Tea3

With this one i'm afraid you really would need the reference number to pass onto paypal or to check delivery status online (royal mail etc wont be able to give you this as they receive so many of these every day). Without it there is no proof of delivery, or even that the parcel has been posted (proof of posting wont help with paypal but may have proved to buyer that you had definately sent item and might help them allow longer for delivery). I dont know too much about paypal disputes but I think that without the recorded reference the only way to avoid refunding is for the customer to close the dispute if they receive the parcel. Also you would be unable to claim as lost delivery/order from royal mail if you dont have proof of posting/reference number etc - sorry.

It wont help with this one but for future a handy way to keep track of recorded delivery numbers is to email the reference number to the buyer via ebay once posted. Not only does this ease their minds but also if they are chasing something a week or so on it is easy to go into sent ebay messages and retrieve the reference number - is very handy if like me you send lots of parcels.

custardy

yup im afraid theres nothing can be done on this without a tracking number.
even if you found the tracking no. and claimed via RM you would be out pocket with the compenstation being £34

soolin

Really just to echo what the others have said in that you can't win a paypal dispute without being able to prove delivery and without your receipt that is impossible.

No the PO do not keep records of the recorded delivery items as they are just standard post and are not carried seperately. Also like custardy says recorded was the wrong service for a phone anyway, as it was over £34 in value it should have been sent special delivery.

The recorded delivery service seems to be having major problems at th emoment with more and more items going astray, but of course you'll never know if your phone was lost or if the buyer was trying it on. On balance if the buyers feedback was good it seems more likely that the phone is lost in the system as of course the buyer would not know you had lost the receipt and would probably not risk a false claim if you could prove delivery.

It pays to be vigilant when using any service as you have found out unfortunately at a cost to yourself.

windswept

A good tip is to always input the tracking number into the paypal transaction - that way they have it in case of any claims and they email the buyer with the number too, which would put off most 'try it on' merchants.;)
Of course the big problem with RD is that 9 times out of 10 you get no proof of delivery.:rolleyes:

Avoriaz

mateo_k wrote: »

Hi wonder wether anyone can help…. it seems as if im going to loose the phone and the money.!!!!..

I can help a bit I hope.

If this ends badly for you, then you have not lost the phone AND the money. You have lost one or the other, depending on how you want to look at it.

You had a phone. You sold it for £65.

You hoped to end up with £65 and no phone.

You have ended up no £65 and no phone, so you have only lost £65.

Or you have lost the phone plus the money you spent on ebay and postage.

Think of it in terms of which hurts the least.

Maybe the phone will turn up but, if not, hopefully thinking like that will remove half the sting.

goshdarnit

If it doesn't turn up in a month or so just use the imei (which you presumably have details of) and get it barred. You've still lost the phone but at least its only usable abroad or for parts.