Oh bum. Just had a damaged parcel. What now?

[IngridBergmann]

I bought a really nice sink for the kitchen which I'm working on atm. It was granite (coated I presume! not solid) and I asked the seller to pack it really well due to it being fragile. He assured me he would and that it would be insured with parcelforce anyway.

It arrived and he had only used the original box - no extra padding as I had asked him to - and sure enough there was a massive crack underneath it

The parcelforce man was great and he said he could scan it as 'refused/damaged' or something, and we re-taped the side we'd opened and he took it away.

I'm a bit worried about the money - it was quite a lot, and when I rang the seller he said he would claim but it could take a couple of weeks to get the money back from PF.
I can't really wait a couple of weeks for the money, if that is what he means - I need him to refund me when he gets the sink back.
I'm also worried that it'll get lost or it'll say it was delivered on the tracking or something else like that, and I've no proof I returned it.

Has anyone been in this situation and has it all been Ok? I hate ebay sometimes.

He is obliged to refund you when he receives it back, you don't have to wait until PF refund him. If necessary, raise a dispute with eBay over it.

Many thanks - he seems nice enough, I just don't want to wait three months if parcelforce take that long!

I feel a bit reassured.

If you open a dispute you open one for an item not received, not damaged, because you would have to return a damaged item by trackable means and prove that you have done so, you cannot do that, so would therefore go for a non receipt dispute as teh seller cannot prove via online tracking the item has arrived.

Thanks Fabby. This is it - what if it just shows 'refused delivery' and doesn't say it's damaged? Then they will find that he tried to deliver it and it got here but I refused it.

I'm a bit concerned.

Ok, I now have the tracking number from Parcelforce, which shows it was delivered then collected four minutes later, and they told me it's been noted as refused due to damage.
So that should be ok.
It'll also show as returned to the sender so I should be able to claim one way or the other.

He has been very apologetic but keeps saying he will submit the claim then 'be in touch' - I can't wait several weeks for the refund, plus due to it being a fragile item they may not pay out.

So I've asked him to refund asap as I need to get another sink.

I don't want to open a dispute, but at least now I think I have what I need in terms of the tracking...I can say it wasn't as described and they will be able to see that I returned it. I hope this is enough.

you need to get him to refund you now and not wait. Hopefully you can explain that that is the correct way to go about it. Open a dispute if need be as I worry that he may not be able to get his money back from the courier if they consider his packaging to be insufficient.

Thankyou, Six, I'm worried too - their list of stuff they don't cover includes granite, but the sink isn't actual granite, it just contains it. So I'm not sure how we get around this.

I've emailed him a list of what won't be covered so he can word the claim carefully.

it says on the PF website they take 8 to 12 weeks to contact the sender, so I will mention that to him and will open a dispute if he doesn't agree to refund immediately or within a week depending on his cashflow I suppose.

I've mentioned leaving him excellent feedback once it's all sorted and so hopefully he will be OK about it - if not, paypal here we come

By the way - do I open an ebay dispute first, or go straight to paypal? I'm not sure how this works any more. I realise I only have 6 weeks to file with paypal so I won't hang about if he gets arsey.