Help-ebay postage etiquette question.

[NestaFiesta]

Hi,

I recently posted a heavy vintage book to a seller who did not receive it. I emailed him a copy of the cert of posting and he checked with his depot to see if they had tried to deliver it- no luck. I was about to issue a refund and send an angry letter to Royal Mail when the item turned up back at mine with a "recipient did not call" box ticked.

My dilemma is- do I ask him to send me the postage again? its cost me £7.06 to post and being a book I could only charge £2.75 so it seriously ate into my small profit.

So far he has ben reasonable but I object to paying a total of £14.12 postage on something that was only a tenner to start with! In fact I only made about a fiver on it.

What does mean, "recipient did not call"?

I think it means they took it back to the depot and the recipient didn't collect. It does sound odd doesn't it? they should have put "did not collect".

sounds like the post depot did not leave a card or the buyer just didnt collect.

Yes, I think that's what happened LilQueenie. So do I ask buyer for postage AGAIN? I don't know what to do and don't want to lose my 100% good feedback. Nor do I want to foot another £7 postage bill when I only made a fiver on it!

If RM did not leave a card then they failed in their duty to you (broke the contract). Normally RM leave cards at least twice, ime, does that sound right to others? Would be clear cut if you & recipient felt that RM must have failed wrt to leaving card in the right place.
I wonder if there's a mistake in the address, or if someone interferred with recipient's post? Recipient even went to depot to try to find it, which is very bizarre that RM still couldn't locate it!

How do you know he was left a card? He might not have been, you cannot ask for postage to be paid again. However, he may now not want it and he could open a PayPal dispute for item not received and get a full refund of what he paid anyways.

I know I can't ask for postage again Fabby- but it would cost me a total of £14.12 to post a £10 book if I didn't!

I think I will liaise with the buyer and both try and blame the RM and make them send it back for free. The RM are a bit rubbish IME, I've had smaller items lost before which I just refund for goodwill. It's starting to cost me though.

The buyer went to the depot the other day and the item was sent FROM his depot on the 24th so maybe it genuinely wasn't there when he checked. He seems like a reasonable guy and he said there was no card left, so we could feasibly blame RM.

sometimes i have had items returned to sender and the po havent even left one card, this has happened twice.

I'll give the buyer the benefit of the doubt and have a go at RM for messing up. Thanks everyone!

Going to make Royal Mail do the job I paid them to do in the first place!

I've had RM fail to leave cards with me twice in the last 6 months.

Idiots.