Damaged goods and payment withheld | Buying on eBay

rehald · 2024-04-22T21:32:23.224000Z

Good evening. I’m not new around here, though I’m afraid I’m still far from the expert user I should be.Something strange happened to me today that I can’t quite make sense of. A customer complained that they had received damaged goods, blaming me for poor packaging. I always pay for shipping insurance on parcels, especially when they’re of a certain value. but if someone tells me that I did a bad job packing, that exempts the carrier from responsibility, when obviously it would be the most direct, immediate and likely cause of the damage to the goods, due to the handling they are subjected to throughout the journey. I found an eBay link that explains how to act when you receive a package, and it says: « If the courier delivers the package and it shows visible damage, follow the instructions below:When you sign the delivery receipt, ask the courier to add the note regarding the damaged package that has arrived at its destination. Important It is essential to report the damage at the time of delivery; otherwise the courier will not accept the claim.The goods arrived in crumbs, so presumably the package must have been visibly wrecked on the outside and the photos do not show it. In that case the recipient would have pointed out the damage to the carrier and would have been entitled to submit a compensation claim to them. I can’t contact the carrier because I’m not their direct customer and the courier’s website does not have forms for senders of parcels, only for recipients. My point of reference is eBay, which does not like being involved in these disputes, or at most Paclink, so it is the recipient who should contact the courier for compensation. The fact that they are asking me for a partial but substantial refund while still retaining the option of claiming the full amount of the damage from the carrier makes me think they want to profit from it, because in this way they would have the bulk of the sum they paid me and the entire sum from the courier’s insurance, speculating on the incident for an amount greater than the value of the goods. I therefore see no reason why I should suffer a block on my eBay account because the recipient, having the option to report to the courier certainly obvious defects in the form of the package whose contents disintegrated and thus ask the carrier and their insurance for compensation, chose instead to contact me, causing me major losses and trouble over a matter for which I am not responsible and which depends solely on the courier. I don’t know whether it is worth reporting this person for an attempted scam, since the package is also a synonym for it. Blocking my account causes me economic damage and it is almost blackmail to keep in place a situation for which I am not responsible and that would be easily resolved by claiming compensation from the carrier’s insurance, which I paid for at the time of shipping.eBay’s rules, very mechanical and automatic, impose an absolutely unnecessary sanction given the insurance paid on the full amount of the shipment. Well, I really have the clear feeling that I have ended up the victim of a scam and that the user’s only intent was to trigger this block and cause me harm, because if they bought the goods for eighty, they cannot think that by destroying them they would make as much money from me as from the carrier’s insurance. That would be unlawful enrichment. eBay should wait before blocking its users because it harms them, since for every day that I don’t earn from sales, I lose money. But of course there are no human faults, only algorithms that do not take every possible situation into account, always assuming bad faith on the seller’s part and never on the buyer’s. This looks like a classic insurance scam. I would like eBay to remove the block because it has no practical use whatsoever. The buyer has no rights against the seller, only against the carrier and the insurance already paid for this kind of risk. Perhaps when the blocking algorithm was created there was no insurance for shipped goods; in any case, it seriously undermines the reliability of the service provided by eBay. Also because if the seller then does not compensate the buyer, it is not right for eBay to withhold from the seller’s sales the amounts needed to compensate the buyer who did not turn to the carrier and its insurance, though they could have done so, to request full compensation for the damage. I am not responsible for what the courier does, how they handle the parcels, how they stack or load them into transport vehicles or conveyor belts or maybe onto trains and trucks. I hope the block is lifted as soon as possible, because it is causing me considerable economic and reputational damage. Thank you for your attention. Good evening.

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Damaged goods and payment withheld | Buying on eBay | eBay Italy