Help please, Buyer saying they received toilet paper not pram

[Angelika321]

As above really. I sent a pram via courier sold for £300, but the buyer is telling me they received toilet paper.

Ebay are insisting I accept the return, (and then file an appeal) but I don't see why I should.

Do I have any recourse?

she's only been an eBay member since November last year ... she has a very unique name

Yes, and she probably had a different account with a different "unique name" before that - and another before that

I'm disappointed for you that ebay are parroting "your word against hers" in spite of all the evidence, but sadly not surprised. The key point seems to be that you're a private individual rather than one of their volume, high commission earning business sellers and IMO they just don't care about the little people (or even seem to want them much any more)

And I write as one who's lost out to a huge business seller who listed provably fake tracking numbers and was still backed by ebay

If the buyer was a scammer surely they could have just taken the pram out of the box and refilled it with loo paper and said look that is what I found when I opened the parcel. I don't understand why they would just wrap the rolls and to pass it off as your parcel

Possibly stolen and toilet paper put in to replace stolen buggy.

Could be that someone else in her house ordered the loo roll though, dh is well known in our house for ordering random things in the middle of the night when he can't sleep (because they are a bargain and usually seen on hotukdeals!) then totally forgets to mention to me. I really hope there is an innocent explanation for op.

Hermes are a nightmare OP. We sent a valuable bike frame for painting via Hermes. In the parcel was a letter to the painter. On the outside was the painter's address securely taped. Bike frame never arrived.
Less than 2 weeks later bike frame - which was personalised one off - appeared on eBay. After much hassle we persuaded the police to visit the eBay seller. It turned out he had a RECEIPT from Hermes as he'd bought the frame at an auction of undeliverable items. Go figure. WTH! No way was it undeliverable as our address / recipient's address was there 3 times!
So police couldn't help a he had valid receipt. So we won auction and bought it off the seller. Who sent it via My Hermes.
Guess what? It 'arrived' 2 days earlier than the delivery estimate and we were on holiday!! Yet apparently we signed for it. Obviously the courier forged our signature.
On the first occasion we obviously complained to Hermes but after their repeated attempts to contact driver as neither he or his manager responded, they said they couldn't help and closed the case. The police tried to get in touch and said that they were going round in circles with Hermes never coming back to them.
Hermes wouldn't deal with us on the second occasion as we hadn't sent it and the seller just said we had it. Eventually eBay gave us money back on the eBay price promise as seller wouldn't help! I think he was involved in the scam.
I was ready to take Hermes to small claims over the 1st issue but haven't done so yet due to some major life events.
We will never but anything that ships through Hermes again.

Also agree with wombat. It's a lot of trouble to actually wrap the loo roll when it could have been as simple as remove the pram, add loo roll to box!

About 7/8 years ago I sold a necklace that was my deceased nans on eBay, I cried all evening but really need money for food shop & electric! I only got £75 for it but I sent it off and was so upset when they claimed it never got there because I ended up losing a weeks wages when eBay took the money back from me to give them.

I've never really got over it, can not abide eBay or buyers who pull shit like this. It made an awful time for me even worse and to this day I'd love to speak to the greedy fucker & tell them how much hardship that put me in along with the hurt of selling something precious to me just to get the basics in!

Hope you get it sorted OP.

You do know the lines and the box actually contain info.
Unless the buyer copies that bit the info will not say you sent the box, or the address it was sent too.
It will also say date and time printed.

Could be that someone else in her house ordered the loo roll though, dh is well known in our house for ordering random things in the middle of the night when he can't sleep (because they are a bargain and usually seen on hotukdeals!) then totally forgets to mention to me. I really hope there is an innocent explanation for op.

I still think your normal first course of action would be to ask your family members if they ordered a shedload of bog roll before instantly jumping to the conclusion that it must have been your pram that somebody has stolen and replaced with toilet roll somewhere along the line. Occam's razor and all that.

The issue is that the pram is recorded as being delivered, so whether or not someone at home did order toilet paper is irrelevant. Hermes think the pram was delivered.

I'd be wary of saying too much to the buyer, e.g. if you mention that the label is different it could give them a chance to "find" yours and take another photo of the black bag "oh this label was on the other side".

I don't know if Hermes do this, but maybe it'd be worth saying to the buyer that hermes will be able to give the time and GPS location of the delivery to the police. If they think you're preparing info today to contact the police tomorrow, perhaps the pram will mysteriously turn up this afternoon. Mentioning cctv on the delivery vans was a great idea.

I do hope you get this sorted.

I am also thinking it is the buyer not Hermes. Who on earth takes a photo of a package before unwrapping it!!

Do you know where you stand with regards to ebay/Paypal investgiating and any courier investigation? Will ebay wait for the courier to investigate before they try to claw the money back?

Who on earth takes a photo of a package before unwrapping it!!

The only reason I can think that any iiocent recipient would do this is if they've previously been burnt by a purchase not being what they ordered.

I thibk something has gone wrong in the system somewhere and I hope it all get sorted.

i were going to buy a pram on eBay it would be a cheap one but also in good condition. Genuine buyers aren’t interested in paying £££s for secondhand items when they could just pay a bit more and buy new.

Not everyone, i was a genuine buyer, i paid 490 for a pram on ebay. Brand new it would have cost me in the region of 1000+
The pram was immaculate and a bargain. I still have it 4 years later.

Scammers. Some have no morals. 😡

@Danni91 bless you, that is so sad

Oh Danni91, that's shockingly awful. Poor you.

eBay are terrible for private sellers. I’ve moved on to Facebook marketplace. You get slightly less but it’s cancelled out by eBay fees and postage anyway. Hope you get it sorted.

Hermes could have mixed up the parcels. This happened when I worked for an interiors shop who also sold online. We sent out a parcel and the customer actually received an entirely different parcel! I asked the customer to send photos of what they had received. The parcel they received was addressed to them and contained a lamp (not the one we had sent out, but it was brand new and clearly from a retailer). I noticed the label said it was from Habitat. I contacted the courier (Citylink, who no longer exist) and explained the situation and it transpired the parcels had got mixed up in the warehouse. I can’t remember whether we were successful with that refund claim, but I do know Citylink were notoriously bad with claims as they often broke things but refused to pay out. I contacted Habitat but they weren’t interested, and our parcel never did turn up.

I now use Parcelforce regularly for my own small business, and even if you print the label yourself they still add another sticker to the parcel as well, so I suspect that when this bit happened to the OPs parcel it got mixed up with another one, so the pram ended up with a different delivery address on it. Perhaps because the parcels look a bit similar someone got mixed up. Goodness knows where the pram parcel is. Hopefully Hermes customer service has improved recently as I know they used to be hopeless. Good luck OP!

Hopefully Hermes customer service has improved recently as I know they used to be hopeless. Good luck OP!

Hermes doesn’t have any customer service any more.

I should know I’ve just had to claim £50 for losing a lamp. Luckily I paid via parcel2go and they refunded my money.

How annoying. Good luck for today OP

Hope you got through to the call centre and this is being sorted.

Hope you get somewhere, OP. This must be so stressful