I auctioned off an item on eBay recently. The buyer has paid me through PayPal. Before he paid, he gave me an address to ship to (address a). When he paid with PayPal, PayPal gave me his confirmed address, (address b) * in a different city*. According to PayPal, confirmed addresses are the addresses where the credit card billing statements are sent.
A little net research shows no phone number in his name at (address a) and a phone in his name at (address b). I emailed him back and told him I would ship to his confirmed address (address b). PayPal should have told him that I only ship to confirmed addresses. It has told that to me more than once on other auctions I have won.
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Yet — my feedback rating is worth more to me than the ~$10 item. I am very leery on bidding on people with complaints.
Sooo- does he have grounds to leave me negative feedback for enforcing the confirmed address rule? Would eBay likely remove negative feedback if he left it and I stated the above case?
Whether he has grounds depends. I don’t really know much about PayPal’s or e-bay’s policies, so let me ask you this- Whose policy is it that you only ship to confirmed (credit card billing) addresses? If it’s either e-bay’s or PayPal’s policy, then they should have informed the buyer. If it’s your policy, then you should have, although I personally wouldn’t leave negative feedback unless you would neither ship to address a nor refund my payment.
(I almost never buy from anyplace that will only ship to my credit card billing address. I’m at work during the hours when UPS, Fed Ex and the Post Office deliver, and only the Post Office has Saturday pick-up for packages.It’s rare that the advantages of ordering a particular item outweigh the hassle of taking off from work to pick it up)
It is not a paypal rule or ebay rule to ship to the confirmed paypal address.
I get my mail at a PO box - my CC statements come to that PO box and no mail comes to my house. So the only confirmed paypal address I can have is my PO box. When I pay via paypal I usually send a note on the paypal receipt stating that you can send it to the confirmed PO box or to my street address.
If the auction says that they will only ship to the confirmed paypal address I will email the seller and let them know. Most of the time they say OK, some say they will send it via USPS which can go to a PO box.
I would say if you didn’t state in the auction that you will not ship to a non-conf. paypal address and you won’t, he has good reason to leave (-) feedback.
Further research-
PayPal recommended that I turn on the “only ship to confirmed address” option when I registered so that I could use the fraud protection they offer. If you don’t use the confirmed address, they will pass along a chargeback if they get one. When this is enabled (as it currently is) it won’t let him pay unless he agrees to the use of his confirmed address. Therefore, by paying with PayPal, he agreed. I agree that I should disclose this (since it obviously makes a difference to me) in future auctions. I’ve read a lot of legalistic gook in the terms section of some auctions - I’m beginning to see why.
Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone that the two addresses are in different cities, though? That’s what made me wonder. I wouldn’t have even noticed it otherwise – I even had a shipping label made with (address a) on it.
My 2 addresses are in 2 different towns and different zip code. The reason is its easier for me to get to the one in the other town (they boarder each other). I could also understand if one is a work address.
I not saying that things like this doesn’t raise a flag, just that there are legit reasons for it.
(quote]Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone that the two addresses are in different cities, though? That’s what made me wonder. I wouldn’t have even noticed it otherwise – I even had a shipping label made with (address a) on it.{/quote]
It doesn’t seem strange to me. Of course that could be because of my own situation. I live about 15 minutes from my mother’s house (which is where I have my packages sent.). Even though we live in the same city, the “city” part of the address is different because we’re served by different post offices. Might be much different in other parts of the country (I’m thinking especially rural areas), but around here, having a package delivered to a neighbor across the street could put the address in a different city and zip code .
And if PayPal won’t let him pay without him agreeing that shipment will be to the confirmed address, he’s got no reason to leave negative feedback for you.
It doesn’t seem strange to me. When I am having a package shipped via UPS, I ship it to my parents’ house, which is 15 minutes away from me and has a different city name* and zip code because 99% of the time someone will be there to sign for it, while UPS can’t find my building, or perhaps can’t push the buzz code next to my name because their fingers are broken, even when there is someone home here
And this is one reason I don’t use Paypal. The one time I used it, the seller shipped UPS to my “confirmed billing address” even though I had requested it be shipped to my parents’ address.
*It’s not technically “in a different town” because they live in area that is not officially part of either of the towns that surround it.
Having sold things on ebay and run across a few weird scenarios, I am alot more careful now because this type of scenario makes an easy setup for credit card fraud.
As sellers, our only protection comes from playing by ebay and or paypals reccomendations.
I ship to where the person asks me to ship once they have bought an item. Who knows
if they are on vacation or if they forgot to update their paypal record?