Ebay purchase never arrived due to duplicate tracking number - How to claim?

savergrant

When the item was reported as 'out for delivery' did it say the delivery office which was arranging delivery?
Your case is much stronger if it isn't your local one.
Theoretically when a sender uploads a tracking number to ebay, ebay should be able to check the delivery address matches but they don't seem to.

robatwork

If you remove all the "RM says this, seller says that, ebay says the other" from your story you have this. You paid £750 to someone for something, and you haven't received it.

You can sue them for it. Even a LBA (letter before action) may well be enough to get a refund. You can go through the money claim procedure https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/make-claim and as you have their name and address, send them (via post and email) the letter or your moneyclaim ready to roll. 

Then claim.

sheramber

robatwork said:

If you remove all the "RM says this, seller says that, ebay says the other" from your story you have this. You paid £750 to someone for something, and you haven't received it.

You can sue them for it. Even a LBA (letter before action) may well be enough to get a refund. You can go through the money claim procedure https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/make-claim and as you have their name and address, send them (via post and email) the letter or your moneyclaim ready to roll. 

Then claim.

Does he have their address?

born_again

robatwork said:

If you remove all the "RM says this, seller says that, ebay says the other" from your story you have this. You paid £750 to someone for something, and you haven't received it.

You can sue them for it. Even a LBA (letter before action) may well be enough to get a refund. You can go through the money claim procedure https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/make-claim and as you have their name and address, send them (via post and email) the letter or your moneyclaim ready to roll. 

Then claim.

Possible hacked account?
With seller selling same item to several people?

Given duplicated tracking no's. Ebay should be taking more interest in this.

Can OP confirm what item was?

sonearandyetsofa

In your shoes, the first thing I would do is try to hunt down the sellers' details. If they are selling as a business, you can find their name, address, email address and phone number on their eBay shop page, and at the bottom of the item page. 

Go to the tracking information page that showed you the photo of the package "delivered" and save a screenshot of it or photograph it on your phone. Do the same for the other package if you have two (I wasn't sure from your description there). If the tracking page shows the location of the delivery on a map or with coordinates, take a photo or screenshot of those too. Then take a photo of the outside of your home, and a screenshot/photo of google maps showing your address location. If there's no map on the tracking info you can screenshot/photo the outside of your property on google streetview to show evidence that your parcel wasn't delivered there.

If you have the seller's phone number, I would try calling them. If not, or if you can't get through or they cut you off, send a message. Inform them that you have not received the package, you have proof that it has not been delivered to your address, and that you'd prefer to resolve the matter amicably before you have to take further action. 

If you don't get anywhere with that, report them to Action Fraud. This won't do anything but it will generate a crime reference number. Contact eBay over the phone about your appeal, stating that the seller has committed fraud, you've reported them to the police, you have a crime reference number and proof that the item was never delivered. Keep calm but remind them that they're facilitating a crime/allowing this guy to defraud you. They should provide you with a web address to upload the information to an appeal. Give them all the stuff you've gathered above to prove that the parcel never got to you and that you've reported it as a crime.

If you have the sellers' address details, you can proceed by sending them a letter before action. Basically similar to the message you sent them, but give them a deadline by which you expect a response and state that you'll be taking legal action against them if they do not respond within this timeframe and that the cost of any further action you have to take will be added to the amount you're claiming from them.

At this point you will likely be waiting for a response from eBay or the seller. If you don't have the sellers' information, you're unlikely to be able to get anywhere with a court claim, but it's up to you to decide whether it's worth risking another £50 loss (about that anyway) or not. If it's a true scam, eBay is more likely to respond than the seller is, and they should refund you. If the seller is just trying it on, they should get alarmed and might refund. 

After all that, your next step is unfortunately issuing a money claim online. I've never had to go that far with an eBay claim though, usually by the time you have a crime reference number they become much more helpful.

savergrant

sonearandyetsofa said:

In your shoes, the first thing I would do is try to hunt down the sellers' details. If they are selling as a business, you can find their name, address, email address and phone number on their eBay shop page, and at the bottom of the item page. 

Go to the tracking information page that showed you the photo of the package "delivered" and save a screenshot of it or photograph it on your phone. Do the same for the other package if you have two (I wasn't sure from your description there). If the tracking page shows the location of the delivery on a map or with coordinates, take a photo or screenshot of those too. Then take a photo of the outside of your home, and a screenshot/photo of google maps showing your address location. If there's no map on the tracking info you can screenshot/photo the outside of your property on google streetview to show evidence that your parcel wasn't delivered there.

If you have the seller's phone number, I would try calling them. If not, or if you can't get through or they cut you off, send a message. Inform them that you have not received the package, you have proof that it has not been delivered to your address, and that you'd prefer to resolve the matter amicably before you have to take further action. 

If you don't get anywhere with that, report them to Action Fraud. This won't do anything but it will generate a crime reference number. Contact eBay over the phone about your appeal, stating that the seller has committed fraud, you've reported them to the police, you have a crime reference number and proof that the item was never delivered. Keep calm but remind them that they're facilitating a crime/allowing this guy to defraud you. They should provide you with a web address to upload the information to an appeal. Give them all the stuff you've gathered above to prove that the parcel never got to you and that you've reported it as a crime.

If you have the sellers' address details, you can proceed by sending them a letter before action. Basically similar to the message you sent them, but give them a deadline by which you expect a response and state that you'll be taking legal action against them if they do not respond within this timeframe and that the cost of any further action you have to take will be added to the amount you're claiming from them.

At this point you will likely be waiting for a response from eBay or the seller. If you don't have the sellers' information, you're unlikely to be able to get anywhere with a court claim, but it's up to you to decide whether it's worth risking another £50 loss (about that anyway) or not. If it's a true scam, eBay is more likely to respond than the seller is, and they should refund you. If the seller is just trying it on, they should get alarmed and might refund. 

After all that, your next step is unfortunately issuing a money claim online. I've never had to go that far with an eBay claim though, usually by the time you have a crime reference number they become much more helpful.

OP says they paid a BPF so must be a private seller account. Presumably the royal mail tracking links to an actual parcel dropped off somewhere in UK, possibly with a return address. OP could try a SNAD claim saying 'parcel tracking shows tracking number misrepresented', might get past the automatic 'delivery confirmed' status.
Presumably still no response from seller?
If item sold for just over the £750 simple delivery max it would seem very suspicious. Does seller have other items listed? 

savergrant

sheramber said:

robatwork said:

If you remove all the "RM says this, seller says that, ebay says the other" from your story you have this. You paid £750 to someone for something, and you haven't received it.

You can sue them for it. Even a LBA (letter before action) may well be enough to get a refund. You can go through the money claim procedure https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/make-claim and as you have their name and address, send them (via post and email) the letter or your moneyclaim ready to roll. 

Then claim.

Does he have their address?

OP's money was paid to ebay. Ebay will have processed it and forwarded it (minus BPF) to the seller, either immediately or after confirmation of delivery. Given the timescale detailed it seems likely ebay have released these funds. It seems probable that the money has been withdrawn to a bank account immediately. If ebay issue a refund they will seek to be reimbursed from the account holder. It is possible that the account has been hacked and the account holder isn't aware of the listing. But it's well worth finding their contact info.

nikmondo

Apologies for not responding sooner. I'll go through and respond to the comments shorly.....

nikmondo

savergrant said:

Two things confuse me.
Firstly I understood to see proof of delivery you needed to enter the delivery postcode, so if the parcel royal mail delivered wasn't addressed to you I'm surprised you can see the photo.
Secondly you seem to be saying the same tracking number is now linking to another parcel? Are you sure the seller/scammer hasn't uploaded a different tracking number? I can't see how two royal mail parcels could have the same tracking number, unless it is the same parcel being returned to sender? That happened to me with evri when a collect in store order was dumped at the parcel shop because it couldn't be scanned, it showed as delivered to delivery address until it suddenly appeared in my garden and the photo/delivery date changed.
It could be a genuine mistake in that the seller has printed a number of labels and uploaded the wrong number to your order. Or it could be a scam where the seller has sold multiple items and purchased one royal mail label and quickly uploaded that number to each order so it looks like they've all been delivered.

It might be worth contacting action fraud (in the process of relaunching as report fraud) as this may be a criminal operation;
https://www.reportfraud.police.uk/

Don't worry, i'm confuded myself! The whole thing is deeply complicated.

So the main issue i have with ebay is that when they check the tracking and type my postcode into the royal mail tracking system, that tracking number is linked to my postcode....which of course is showing as delivered. As soon as ebay see this, they aren't interested in helping as they repeatidly say...."on the system it's showing as delivered..."

You can see on the tracking info that it's been delivered twice and 2 different times!

nikmondo

savergrant said:

"So the following day, i checked the tracking number online was again....and even more oddly the item had been delivered again.....to another address which wasn't mine! This meant a new picture had replaced the old one and the picture showed a pile of parcels in what looked like a warehouse."

Do you have the original tracking info you checked? Or just the original proof of delivery? Can you see whether it is the same parcel or something different? Can you see the address?

So i managed to screenshot both pictures of delivery, the latest one has replaced the original one but the parcel does look similar/ the same.....but the quality of photos are horrendous. The address and company name on the first picture which is just about readable is not my address or name.