I sell an ocasional car part on eBay (from an old car I junked). In early July a guy bought a power window switch. His address was a POB in CA.
My listing indicated I would send with the cheapest USPS shipping available. For some reason (I can’t get the hang of USPS shipping prices) the price for Priority Mail was significantly less than Parcel Select. However, the guy sent me a message saying he wanted Parcel Select specifically and not Priority Mail. And he was willing to pay $3.28 extra for this privilege, despite the item itself costing only $10. I thought that was strange at the time, but didn’t make anything of it - maybe the guy once had a bad experience with Priority Mail, or something.
This was in mid-July. Today the package was returned as undeliverable. According to the tracking information it was delivered on July 17, but then returned as “undeliverable as addressed” on August 14. I called the USPS to ask what this means. They said the only thing they could think of was that the guy no longer owned the POB.
The weird thing is that it’s been over 5 weeks since the purchase and I haven’t heard a word from the buyer. The whole thing is just strange, but the added fact that the guy never contacted me about a package that should have been there long ago makes me wonder if he has something up his sleeve. But what could it be?
[Meanwhile, I’ve sent him an email through eBay informing him of the state of affairs and asking what he wants to do next.]
Had a couple similar experiences myself on Ebay. One returned “not at this address” and another tagged as an invalid address even though I bought the shipping label from USPS. One buyer’s account was shown as suspended a few weeks after I got the package pack, the other had a 2 feedback and that never changed. Held on to both items for about 6 months then relisted them.
This guy’s feedback includes 10 in the last month.
His feedback is 100% (on 72 ratings).
And again, it’s not just the returned package, but the also the strange insistence on a particular method of shipping, followed by dead silence when the package didn’t come.
The only thing that occurs to me is that the guy’s username suggests that he might be a serviceman in the US Navy. If that’s the case, I suppose it’s possible that he’s been out at sea and out of contact all this time. And I’m wondering if perhaps Parcel Select has some advantage in that they’ll hold packages for longer than Priority Mail will?
I don’t think they would hold it for a month before returning over a wrong address. Plus, the address comes up automatically in eBay based on his profile, and he’s apparently had a lot of other things shipped to him without incident.
If he doesn’t need the part he could return it for a refund.
I’m going to guess you have the wrong address (your fault, his fault, I don’t know) and the person who’s PO Box it did land in doesn’t check it very often. They just did a few days ago and gave it back to USPS to return it. Make sure you sent it to the right address and email the guy to let him know that if he wants to pay for shipping you’ll resend it, otherwise it’s going to be relisted.
If he’s sure that’s the right PO Box, I’d ask for a physical address and send it there after saying “Since I sent it to the PO Box once and it came back, I don’t want to do that again since this I already have to pay for shipping twice”.
I’ve done that in the past, they swear it’s the right address and I just blame it on USPS/UPS/FedEx and ask them for a different address.
But that still leaves the question as to why the buyer never contacted me after not receiving his item for 5 weeks. (And why he was so insistent on Select shipping, assuming that’s related.)
You seem to be saying that I should get him to pay for shipping and then that I should say I’ve paid for shipping twice.
In any event, if it’s a wrong address there’s no chance that it’s my fault. As above, I did not type this guy’s address into the label. When you sell something in eBay and click on the option to ship it, the guy’s address automatically populates the address field - it’s not anything the seller has entered. So I’m not going to be paying for shipping it again.
I am not a professional eBay seller - I did this as a lark, for the most part - so I’m not terrified of negative feedback. I have a 100% rating so far, but I’m not paying for things that are clearly not my fault in order to maintain that.
That was sort of two thoughts mashed together with a break and a phone call in the middle. My guess is that it sat in a PO box for a month, maybe not his, and then someone found it and it got returned. It’s even possible USPS put it in the wrong box, so the address was correct, but the wrong person got it, returned it and now you have it.
Why he never contacted you, could be a million reasons. Maybe he was on vacation. Maybe he thought you didn’t ship it yet and wasn’t in any particular hurry (not everything throws a fit when they don’t have their item in 45 minutes). Who knows?
As for the shipping cost, what I meant was that if you’re sure you sent it to the address he supplied you and it turns out that he gave you the wrong address, that’s on him and he should either pay you to reship it or forfeit the item (since it’s so cheap). If he verifies that the address is correct, then I guess it’s up to you to decide who pay’s for shipping again, but you might suggest that he give you a different address since you’ll now be paying for shipping again and the first address clearly didn’t work.
Anyone else find it incredibly sad that the first thought, on encountering a screwy delivery of a paid-for part (with no contact from buyer) is that it must be some sort of ‘scam’?
You got your money, and you have the part. How do you figure this is some sort of scam?
If the erstwhile buyer had both the money and the part, a scam might be afoot.
What do you think the buyer is going to do - insist on sending you more money for another oddball delivery method?
Did your listing specify “US only” for shipping? If so, the buyer may be overseas and was using (or trying to use) a freight-forward company.
It is a scam. I saw this on Remington Steele once. The part was used to commit a murder. It was sent to a PO box so the postmaster won’t know how long the recipient had it and used it before he returned it.
Do not get your fingerprints on the part. If you hold up a blue light to the part, there’s blood on it.
I would tell you how it ends, but President Reagan came on tv halfway through the show to explain the bombing of Libya. But I’m assuming it doesn’t end well.
Yeah, they will. It’s still the post office, and you’re still a regular customer, and they don’t know the particular status of their customers’ day to day business. If you don’t pay for your box, they will eventually close it.
For reasons I can’t remember, I paid for a box on Ft. Hood during the time I was stationed there. It was cheap, but to the post office, I was just another customer.
This is a mistake. There are many many scams which rely on the mark thinking exactly along the lines that you outline. Check overpayment scams are one example that springs to mind. While the details of that scam are not present here, the important point is that someone not versed in the nuances of how scams can be perpetuated can be frequently be lulled into a false sense of security by exactly the type of simplistic thinking that you outline here, with the mark not being aware of nuances that a scammer can exploit.
Again, the issue here is the confluence of 3 different odd aspects here, being again 1) paying extra for a shipping method that was not (to my knowledge) actually any better, 2) not picking up the package that he was ostensibly so concerned about reaching him, and 3) no contact about it. All that said, I am not insisting that it must be some sort of scam. But it raised my suspicions, so I figured I’d ask if anyone else has some experience that would be helpful.
The only thing that occurred to me is a possible attempt to get something out of me by threatening some sort of legal action or eBay complaining. But I don’t know. Scammers are very inventive – the whole point of being a scammer is that the mark can’t figure out what you’re doing.
Scammer is a possibility, and given how seller-unfriendly I hear eBay is, that’s a risk you need to always keep in mind.
Many people lead very chaotic lives. They order things and forget. They order three of them from different sellers intending to accept the first that arrives and return the other two. Then they forget about the other two. Their computer craps out and they don’t remember their password to their mail or eBay account ever since they clicked the little box for “remember me on this site.” They lost their job and moved. They forgot to pay the USPS box renewal. Their ex-GF took all the keys to the PO box. They ran out of their psychotropic meds. Etc., etc., etc.
For something *de minimis *like this I’m going to assume chaos before malice. The funky shipping decision is already a sign of less-than-full-deck thinking.
