I’m envisioning the dealers on street corners now in booths with plastic screens, no longer taking cash, with contactless pickup down the block.
Well, I have a fun update: My mostly hypothetical situation has become real, and PayPal won’t budge on issuing a refund.
Upthread I mentioned a problematic eBay transaction. The short of it: the listing, item and seller were all banned from eBay nearly immediately after I completed payment. That means there’s no ability to contact the seller, nor leave feedback, etc etc. In essence they’ve deleted the transaction.
I filed a claim with PayPal about a week after the “expected delivery date” came and went with zero movement on the “tracking” number, which claimed DHL was shipping the item, however, DHL’s site doesn’t accept the # as real. (I have no idea how one generates tracking info for the PP ticket if the shipper’s site doesn’t even accept it’s a real #).
PP told me that since it was shown as “in transit” they couldn’t rule in my favor. They suggested I refuse the package if it arrives, which…how does one do that with porch drop offs?
I got to finally chat a real human on eBay, and as soon as he reviewed the details, immediately said he would close the case in my favor and issue the refund.
Never happened.
Checked again today, and once again another human promised me the case was in my favor, that the seller was busted for selling counterfeits which is why he was banned, and automatically found in my favor. Upon further inspection, they explained that since there was an open dispute on PP, I would have to wait for them to close the case on their end.
Which they did, in favor of the seller, because they generated “proof of delivery.” Did I mention this persons PP email is based out of Russia?
Now, eBay is saying yes, 100% you are owed a refund, however, PayPal controls the money and you need to appeal their decision because I am indeed the aggrieved party and the case was found in my favor and I AM owed a refund. They’ve made that clear in no uncertain terms.
When I try to appeal, PayPal automatically generates a new case # and automatically denies the claim, and says “This item is not eligible for PayPal Protection.” Like, it pops up the second you click “submit.” Tried it twice, just generates a new case # and auto-denies it.
So not only do I have to be the go-between with eBay and PayPal, PP won’t even HEAR the appeal and just dead-ends me.
So…now what? Do I talk to my bank, do a charge back?
nm…
Filing a dispute on the transaction with your bank does sound like a reasonable next move.
Your saga is why I do not buy from eBay no matter how enticing the price and use PayPal only if that is the only option offered. I too, have had a refund denied by PP.
Right now I’m trapped between the eBay side, who found immediately no-questions-asked in my favor because they had already taken action against the seller for selling counterfeit goods, who have promised a refund regardless of shipping status, and PayPal, who keeps going “yeah but this tracking number…” I feel like shipping/tracking no longer factors in–they promised me a refund out of hand based on the already discovered practices of the banned seller.
PayPal simply will not honor it. I don’t understand how that works: I BOUGHT the item through eBay and I am covered under their “buyer protections” policy, I simply PAID through PP…all they did was facilitate the exchange of money…THEIR policies should be moot at this point.
It’s like going to a retail store and they say “sure we’ll give you a refund” only to stop and say “oh, sorry, the company that handles our CC system says “screw you,” and you’ll have to talk them into “not screwing you.” We can do anything on our end.”
I think someone is not explaining something to you properly. It’s been a long time since I had an eBay/Paypal dispute, but I do remember it had to be done in a particular order - and if the first entity ruled in my favor , I wouldn’t need to follow the dispute process with the second one. And either would close my dispute if I had tried to resolve it via a chargeback on my credit card. Are you saying you filed a dispute with eBay, eBay found in your favor and then you filed a dispute with Paypal? Because if that’s the case, that could be the root of your problem. You shouldn’t be dealing with Paypal at all if eBay is refunding you. It’s exactly like if a store refunded your payment - you wouldn’t also file a dispute with the credit card company. And if you did, it might cause problems.
I had a couple of bottles of wine shipped to my mother. Mom was waiting excitedly with ID in hand (getting carded for booze at 86 is a fun diversion), but they didn’t even ring the bell.
And for everyone of these, there is a seller side saying, “I shipped it as per PP rules. I have the tracking number showing delivery. I even have a video of the buyer doing an unboxing video on youTube showing them receiving the item so why did PP have me give them a refund for ‘not receiving the item’?”
That’s because a flex driver who has to deliver one package every 3 minutes hits a line on an app, and sometimes hits the wrong line, which is easy to do, because you are walking and inputting info at the same time. But no one goes back to correct it. By then, you are at your car, and getting the info for the next delivery.
The main reason that Amazon packages get left on your porch some place when you are not home (I can’t speak for UPS, USPS, or anyone else), is that even when the driver marks that a business was closed, and a package couldn’t be delivered, or there was no safe place to leave a package, the driver still gets dinged for a non-delivery. However, if the driver leaves a package in front of a dark storefront that won’t be open again for 72 hours, the package was “delivered,” and it doesn’t mess up the driver’s average.
You want to keep your average percent of packages delivered pretty high, because you can get suspended, or relegated to undesirable times and areas if you average percentage of delivered packages drops too low.
On top of that, if you deliver every package you picked up, once they are done, you go home. If you have even one left, you have to go back to your pick-up location and leave it. That can mean getting home 45 minutes later. Or if you have a second block of deliveries from a different pick-up to get to, you might have to cancel it, just to get the time freed up to return your one undeliverable.
So drivers do whatever they can to drop a package. This means that if your building number is not displayed, or not prominently displayed, the driver is going to guess. Worse, your number might be displayed, but the house’s next to yours might not be, and the driver might see that house first, guess, and leave the package in the wrong place.
Don’t get me started on people who move and don’t change their addresses in the Amazon database, just send a note to the driver indicating that their new address is across town, and they expect the driver to take 40 minutes of their time to drop one package.
Just suffice to say, the drivers are not the problem; Amazon’s policies are.
Huh, then why did I get a “this establishment was closed, so we couldn’t deliver” notice on a package that was supposed to be delivered to my home, on a day I was home all day long. I haven’t moved. The address was correct. I was pretty pissed by that.
I was literally sitting in the living room within sight of the driveway when I got the email telling me my parcel was undeliverable.
My guess was that it was raining, and my front door is up a flight of steps, and I’d already yelled at Amazon for their delivery person leaving my parcels in the middle of my driveway in the rain. And the driver didn’t want to leave the nice warm cab to delivery my parcel.
I’m pretty sure there are problems with some drivers, too. In addition to my complaints, the neighbors with kids say the driver drives dangerously fast on their little dead end, and they are afraid for their kids. I mean, yeah, maybe Amazon puts the driver under time pressure, but it’s still the driver’s choice to speed.
Just because it’s delivered by “Amazon” doesn’t mean a salaried Amazon driver with an Amazon branded delivery van left it–the gig drivers use their own cars and are paid by the drop, have less investment in their jobs and less training/oversight as well so yeah, those guys can be pretty clueless. And if the gig drivers around here are anything to go by it’s likely they don’t read English well either so any delivery notes you might have on your account are nothing so much as hollering in a wind tunnel.
We had a UPS delivery scheduled this week. It’s a gaming chair for my kid whose workstation (remote learning) is right in front of the window that affords a perfect view of the walkway and the covered porch.
At 5pm the UPS driver runs up the driveway and walkway affixes a neon colored “Sorry we missed you” sticker to the door and runs away. I get an attempted delivery notification before he even comes up the drive so I open the door and chase him down to the truck.
He claims he carried the package up to the door, rang the bell and waited five minutes before affixing the sticker. My kid is standing there telling him she saw him do nothing of the sort. He got into the truck and drove away. FedEx wanted me to pick up the package the next day from a facility 15 miles away. I told them the doorbell camera footage was going up on my kid’s YouTube channel. The package was on the porch within an hour. The guy was cursing a blue streak.
My kid’s YouTube videos get an average of 21 views and I don’t have a doorbell camera.
We also have Amazon logo trucks as well as unmarked trucks delivering for Amazon just flying through our neighborhood frequently going round corners driving on the wrong side of the road.
I work for a company with a large deliver business. We have productivity targets and on-time delivery metrics. We pay a ton of parking fines. But any moving violations are on the driver. Our insurance insists upon it. If we are caught reimbursing a driver for a speeding ticket we’d be in a lot of trouble.
With UPS the delivery of a Notice counts as a delivery.
In 1950, a delivery too big for the mailbox was just left nearby.
You question is, When did the American people become so morally deficient that things could not be left safely?
July 5, 1776?
You’d be surprised.
A couple of times I’ve had packages delivered that were tucked right up against my garage door. Not at the edge of the door, or at the center (it’s a 2-car garage), but pretty much right behind my car. On one of these occasions, I ran over the package as I was backing my car out of the garage. Fortunately not with the tire, but my car’s underbody snagged it and shredded it before noticed the noise and stopped to extract it.
I do look behind me when I’m backing up - both over-the-shoulder and using the backup camera - but I’m not in the habit of doing a visual sweep of the patch ground right behind my car to see if someone has left an 8-inch-tall package there. If the package had been left at the end of my driveway I would have spotted it, but tucking it right behind my car pretty much guaranteed I was going to run it over.
I don’t order quite that much but I do order frequently. Every company I have ordered from, especially Amazon, has never given me any hassle about lost orders or wrong mailings. In the last 10 years I have had maybe 5 packages that fall in this category.
That’s pretty optimistic. I’d go back a bit further - maybe the last common ancestor of humans and dolphins?
We live in a small rural town, and several times sites have said our address is incorrect, or actually, there is no such address. I’ve explained that although we live in town, there is no mail delivery on our street, and we only get mail at the post office. They didn’t seem to “get it.” Funny, UPS and Fedex deliver here all the time (they also regularly stop by the post office). We’re also retired, so home most of the time (and when our dogs hear a big truck come down the street, they start barking). They’ve left it on our covered porch and by the front gate, luckily there’s been no problems there.