We had to refund £250 at the end of last week and £350 this morning. One of the packages is stuck in customs in Italy, and for the last three weeks has been within 20 miles of its final destination but he customer has been complaining and eBay has refunded him despite the recent difficulties and the obvious looming problem. Yes, it will be delivered soon, so the Royal Mail insurance won’t pay out, the customer will “forget” to pay and eBay will wash their hands of us.
It’s he same story for our Malaysian parcels – they have been in the UK as part of the massive backlog from the cyber attack, and is still showing as in transit – one parcel being in Milton Keynes and the other slightly further along the chain. But these are exceptional times and as we can prove they are on the way I don’t see why we should suffer. Yes, it’s irritating for the customers, but in the end i’s not our fault. Patience would not hurt.
However, things are a little different this time as I am recording all the details so we can chase up the issues with the local police. I doubt it will help, but it’s worth a try. I’m fed up with people pulling this one, and thinking we are too stupid to spot it. It’s usually too small a sum to be worth chasing up but in this case they are big enough to warrant taking time over following up.
We have another one active at the moment too – and he wrote to tell us that he has had two parcels through from the USA recently so doesn’t understand why his parcel from us hasn’t got there. Let’s see . . .
Royal Mail is targeted by Russian criminals for a cyber attack and their woeful lack of cyber security is exposed. They make heavy weather of the recovery. We have mail in the system and can’t do anything about i. Meanwhile, a totally different country, with no problems, is able to process its mail efficiently. Apart froma customer who is clearly unable to process logical thoughts, tghe two things have nothing in common.
Pah! Is all I can say.
Eighteen minutes – not too bad . . .
Magical Worlds Stamps
talk to refund cases. the most boring thing i’ve ever experienced
🙂 Indeed.
Sounds very complicated to me. And stressful.
It can be, but one of the people we recently refunded just paid us for a parcel that was delivered after the refund, so there are some decent people about. 🙂
Good!
He was American – I find that Americans tend to be more honest over this sort of stuff than many of the UK residents on eBay.
Pah! is so restrained
Julia recently gave me a real roasting about shouting, swearing and being generally aggressive towards the 21st Century. I am trying to tone myself down. 🙂
🙂
Are there any services available, like United Parcel Service or FedEx, available to you for international delivery? If there are, they are probably more expensive.
More expensive, less flexible, more likely to damage items and less secure to be honest. We have to use them sometimes but tend to have more trouble with them. Royal Mail has been unfortunate/badly managed with the cyber attack but are generally better than couriers. eBay offers its own managed delivery system but it is fiendishly expensive.
Pah! indeed.
🙂