Warning: Flaw in eBay returns process

[MrHCinDE]

I have a very bad experience of the returns process with eBay and UPS.

An item arrived to damaged, i.e. not as described.

The seller accepted my returns request without any issue, she said it happened during transit and raised a damage claim for the shipping. These things can happen, I don’t take it personally.

On her instructions, the package was collected for inspection by UPS and according to the tracking info should have been then forwarded on back to her to complete the return and trigger my refund. Or so it should have been.

Since the postage was purchased via eBay Packlink, UPS tried to return the package to their contract partner and not to the sender. Delivery was refused and for several weeks the package has been considered abandoned by UPS.

UPS refuse to take instruction from me as I have no contract with them, they will only take instructions from the contract partner. Based on the current status, the package will either be scrapped or sold.

In the meantime, my returns case has been closed without a refund because the seller has not received the returned item. Even though I fully complied with the correct procedure by handing over the package to the courier as requested somehow the seller gets to keep the money. Thanks eBay for your excellent buyer protection!

Through absolutely no fault of my own, I neither have the article nor the money.

The very best I could hope for is that the package eventually finds its way to the seller and she decided as goodwill to send me a refund.

The second best is that somehow it comes back to me in which case I end up with the damaged article, unusable in its current state.

Not unlikely is that eBay Packlink and UPS don’t resolve this at all and the item will be scrapped/sold.

The flaw in the system is that if the courier will not accept instructions from the buyer or seller, it is up to eBay Packlink to get involved. However this has not been possible to resolve within the time given for the returns case.

There needs to be a change in policy that damaged goods for shipping purchased through eBay Packlink are automatically sent to the seller and more generally that if such an issue involving eBay Packlink should occur, eBay should talk with eBay Packlink and find a solution within the returns case timescale.

Thanks to the combined incompetence of eBay, eBay Packlink and UPS I will probably end up losing out a not insignificant amount of money through no fault of my own.

[vetsurginc]

Had a similar problem that was complicated by UPS contract person had wrong address, so my package could not be delivered. After a two month wait, with attempted instructions from myself and seller. UPS suddenly decicded they could return it to the seller and after another two months, managed to do so. Seller (bless them) had already refunded my money. I reordered and paid the extra cost for FedEx. Came on time and correctly.

[MrHCinDE]

Good news at last! I finally got my refund!

I requested a refund on Monday with a deadline within 3 days. By Friday I hadn’t heard anything so decided to send a PayPal invoice. This got a fast reply, in which the seller expressed her frustrations about some aspects of the original transaction. I took those into consideration and in the end I decided to take some of the burden of the additional postage she paid (that I wasn’t previously aware of) and offered to waive my right to a refund of the postage I paid, as long as she refunded within 3 days.

It came down to a decision whether I wanted to have around 95% of the total eligible refund now without having to waste more time talking to eBay and possibly starting legal action. On balance for me it was the right decision to settle now.


The PayPal invoice seemed to accelerate things and for me was well worth the PayPal fee.

In the end and no thanks to eBay, Packlink or UPS, this matter has been resolved. I won’t put any value at all on eBay buyer protection in the future though, which is a shame. The commission eBay takes should be more than enough to cover such things and frankly I always had my doubts about selling on eBay as I thought they unfairly favoured the buyer, now I see that they’re happy to take the commission without really offering much protection to either party.

The really unfortunate part of it all is that if the seller had gone to more trouble than just putting the trombone (in its case) directly in a heavy duty plastic bag, the chance of shipping damage would have been much reduced. For the sake of £5 worth of bubble wrap or even a £10 cardboard box with some packing peanuts, we could have both come away from the transaction fully satisfied.

Anyway, eBay have shown themselves to plumb the depths of customer service and I’ll be avoiding buying or selling on eBay for the near future.