Refund Refused (Ebay): Is everything above board & can I do anything to get a better outcome?

eddddy

richard_3095 said:

The seller is a UK seller. And honest. The seller has a contract with the carrier. Does the carrier have an obligation to me to give a statement of his methods of establishing proof of delivery? 

No - the carrier has no contract with you, and therefore no obligations to tell you anything.

Based on your post, in simple terms, the legal position is...

• You had a contract with the seller for them to supply and deliver a book to you.
• You say that the seller has not supplied and delivered that book to you, so the seller is in breach of contract
• So you can make a court claim against the seller (i.e. sue the seller) for your losses resulting from the breach of contract
• Those losses would probably be £18.25

(It seems that the seller may have subcontracted the delivery to Amazon Logistics. That has nothing to do with you. If you win your claim of £18.25 from the seller, the seller might decide to sue Amazon Logistics for £18.25 to cover their losses. But again, that's nothing to do with you.)

Sandtree

richard_3095 said:

So, it's the seller I'd be suing. Even though the carrier is at fault.  The seller would no doubt use the carrier's statement that delivery was made. I guess the judge would have to determine whether that proof was reliable evidence of delivery. I do not see this as a case where the integrity of either the seller or buyer is to be decided. I think the judge would be able to appreciate both seller and buyer are honest in their dealings. Indeed, I'm sure the seller would not be claiming I'm lying. The issue would be, is delivery proven.

You have no contract with the carrier and they have no liability to you (unless you arranged and paid the courier directly to collect the item from the seller).

Judges in England and Wales are not investigatory, they judge the case based on the evidence that is present to them by the claimant(s) and defendant(s). You can have a strong case with great evidence but if you forget key details, dont follow process or forget to submit evidence etc the judge decides on whats put infront of them. 

So your argument will be I bought a book for £18 and despite the seller's courier stating it was delivered on 24 December I never received it. The seller will most likely concur you bought an £18 book from them but will contend you did receive it with the courier's tracking data as evidence that you did. 

These two stories cannot both be true and so the judge will have to decide what is most likely to have happened. 

If the seller accepts you never received, as you suggest, then they have an obligation to refund you or resend a replacement book and they will have a claim against the courier for which you are nothing but a witness and its their decision what actions, if any, they'd take against the courier.

Money_Grabber13579

Do Amazon Logistics not use GPS when delivering parcels? If the GPS shows your address as the point of delivery, they are going to have a fairly convincing argument (albeit, not infallible) argument that it was delivered to you.  Are you sure it couldn’t have been stolen from your doorstep?

Of course, there does seem to be the suggestion that delivering to a doorstep isn’t delivering to you and so remains the responsibility of the seller until it is delivered to you - not sure how that would be interpreted in times of covid though.