Seller with excellent feedback rating sells an item to a buyer with similarly good feedback. Seller ships the item with tracking & insurance and the buyer receives it just fine.
Then the buyer suddenly decides to screw over the seller, despite having been honest in all his past transactions. He reports to eBay that the seller sent him an empty box instead of the actual item.
At this point, what happens? I assume that one person would first file an insurance claim with the post office. But how does the post office know whether anything was actually in the box to start with?
And if the post office refuses to honor the claim, what recourse does the seller have? The tracking info would only show that a package was sent, not what was in the package.
Conversely, what if the seller really did ship an empty box? What recourse would the buyer have?
Somebody has to get screwed in this case, but who?
One thought. If the buyer claims (s)he recieved an empty box, and assuming the item sent had some heft to it, check the postage on the package. If it was applied at the post office, it will be for the total weight of the package. If the empty box weighs less, then the buyer is not being honest.
The seller purchased insurance, therefore the seller can file a claim and make good to the buyer. Even if the buyer was charged for the insurance, the seller is the insurance provider’s customer. So the insurer (post office) gets screwed. Presumably they take into account the potential for fraud and investigate appropriately. Since the crime is probably federal, this type of fraud is probably not the safest way to try to make a buck.
Mostly if you can provide ebay and paypal with info that the package shipped (tracking number, etc) then they’re satisfied. I have run into this a couple of times, and it would seem that they don’t care if the seller mailed an empty box, just that he mailed a box, which means it is extremely hard for a buyer to scam a legitimate intelligent seller. I won’t say anything about the other way around though…