Aaargh - buyer not received, PO didn't give me receipt?!? What do I do?

[Tamoo]

Having sold a load of stuff over the last couple of weeks I just received a message from a buyer saying he hadn't received the item.

It was a small item of jewellery and he paid £50. I posted it Recorded Delivery on 30th Jan, with a bunch of other parcels.

Have just gone through my receipts and although I have individual receipts for the other Recorded items (8 of them) I do not have one for his. However I have the receipt for payment and it shows 9 items were posted, all sent First Class Recorded. By ticking off the others I know which one is his, it shows I paid £1.52 for posting, but it seems the PO never printed off the original receipt.

Of course I stood in front of the PO guy and watched him painstakingly label them all, so I know it has been stickered and gone in the bag. I've also double checked the address in my own records to make sure I wrote it down correctly (I did).

The buyer has asked for a tracking number and of course I can't give him one , having no individual receipt. But it was definitely paid for and posted. What on earth do I do?

It's not a small amount of money and I know the PO don't compensate for lost jewellery :( but where on earth could it be, what do I say to the buyer, and how do I track it without a record of the barcode number.

(I've messaged him to say I wil chase it up at my PO on Monday but no doubt he will resend his request for a tracking number.)

Aaargh, shit, help, etc etc.

Recorded delivery labels usually run in a sequential order so it may be worth checking your receipts to see if one number from the sequence is missing. I send so many items via RD that my post office gives me a roll to add my own stickers and they do follow on along the same roll. So, as you sent a batch together chances are they could well do the same.
Royal Mail trace and track does usually show details of where and when the item was posted even if it's not been signed for.
ie "Recorded Delivery item (13 digit ref) was posted from X post office at x time and is progressing through our network."
You obviously won't get a signature / delivery confirmation if the item hasn't reached it's destination yet but it may help you if you need to confirm you did send it, from where and when.

Thanks for replies. He's already asked again for the tracking number. Annoying that it's the weekend and I can't go into the PO til Monday. I know the PO doesn't cover for jewellery however I took a gamble on them not losing it I guess! I have never had a problem with Recorded 1st Class and I didn't think it was any 'safer' by Special Delivery. But yes, in retrospect, I guess I've messed up :( There does seem to be a link between the PO not giving me an individual receipt for that item and it being the only one that hasn't been delivered. As I said though I stood and watched the guy label them all and put them in the sack for the postman I mean, it should have arrived the next day, and this was Monday...

Thanks anyway will just have to ignore the buyer until Monday I guess

Ignoring your buyer is not a good idea, even if you just message back to say you'll see what you can find out is better than nothing.
Although as your item was jewellery and worth £50 you should have used Special Delivery rather than Recorded Delivery. That's water under the bridge now mind but worth remembering if you need to send anything valuable again.

It may be worth as I said, to check the numbers you have and type in any potential missing ones to see if you get a result.
Hopefully it's waiting at a depot for collection and will eventually be returned to you if your buyer doesn't receive it.
I am not sure if the Post Office can trace reference numbers back, but as they do scan the barcodes on Recorded items and if you know roughly what time you sent it then it may be a possibility.

Tell him it was sent recorded delivery, so will check your receipts and get back to him. Ask him to check neighbours and ring local sorting office to check.
Sadly I had something sent, I never got a card though the door and local sorting office returned it, to OZ!!

I was sent a parcel by second class recorded - didn't arrive; contacted seller - tracking said 'sent details... progressing through the system'. Few weeks went by and it turned up rolled in with two slim catalogue type items with elastic band around them, left in postbox, no signature.
It's still 'progressing through the system' as far as the PO is concerned and noone cares anyway. I rang the seller to let her know, we were both relieved not to have to pursue a claim. Another instance (these both happened a couple of months ago, few weeks apart) I posted a letter first class with cheque to seller. Received an enquiry from her a week later asking if I'd sent it- it turned up the following morning but inexplicably delayed by a whole week. I was Not Happy.
Royal Mail's argument that very few things go missing doesn't ring true for me and it is a shame but getting signatures is a must these days - and Special Delivery seems to be the safest but costs a bomb.

I've realised what happened now (having gone through a huge pile of receipts about five times over), the guy at the post office has put the wrong post code through. ie, I've got 2 separate receipts for 2 parcels sent to one address, and no receipt for this person's piece of jewellery.

Thus, despite the item itself being correctly addressed, the barcode/recorded delivery system thinks it is going to somewhere else entirely

I'm not sure how this will play out in their system; surely they wouldn't deliver an item anywhere else than the address on the label?

At least I know what went wrong, it's a start wrt finding the damn thing. And I can narrow its barcode number down to two possibilities!

Yes Special Delivery costs a lot more, silly of me not to use it in hindsight but the whole reason I'm selling my jewellery is because I'm stony broke. Among the usual household crap and clothes I don't wear I also sold a load of jewellery my mum gave me which in an ideal world would have been passed down to my DS. Thus it's even more gutting if I both lose the piece and have to refund.

I'm not ignoring the buyer completely I have said I'm going to go the PO myself and look into it on Monday, I think that's fair. I'm reluctant to try to explain it because he is foreign/messages badly spelt etc. Would rather wait until I hear what the PO have to say and I have more to tell him than a convoluted explanation of missing/duplicate receipts.

Thanks for messages and advice