@gramophonerecord wrote:
I asked the buyer if it looked like it had been opened, but there has been no reply so far...
There often isn't when you call buyers like this out on their BS. Many buyers (or at least the ones who try it with me) seem to bank on the seller not knowing or remembering for sure what was packed and therefore getting the benefit of the doubt for a refund or replacement. I even had one buyer try it 6 months after they purchased, I was able to shut them down immediately, though, because I get messages like this frequently enough that I ended up photographing every single package with their contents, showing the address as well, and I keep them for up to a year.
My items are small though, so it's easy enough for me to send through the photo and just say it's so they can verify it was definitely packed, and maybe they missed it, to check the packaging again or maybe the area where they opened it, but that's pretty much impossible with something the size of a record, in that if there's two, it'd be pretty hard to miss one (out of curiosity, did they even say which one was supposedly missing? It's not clear if they specified which, and it'd be pretty odd if they didn't). I also advise that everything is weight-checked, and that my remaining stock-count is correct, in that I don't have more left than I should (or would if I hadn't sent them the item(s)).
Most times I never hear back, sometimes I hear back weeks later when the buyer tries to purchase again and finds they're blocked (too bad, I don't deal with people who think it's ok to lie and try to steal from me), and occasionally I hear back shortly after saying they found it after all.
Of course, sometimes things can happen to packages in transit, damage can occur, items may be lost from it, or customs can open them and maybe not re-pack everything correctly, so I usually ask a few questions to determine the liklihood of that before hitting them with the above, just to make as sure as possible whether or not the buyer is on the level, or just another would-be theif - however, of all the messages I've received claiming missing items where my records indicate otherwise, none of them had any credibility whatsoever. I only ever had one buyer push it to a PayPal dispute, and while that didn't quite go as I would have liked, I didn't lose any money owing to the proof I had to show PP. I understand for some sellers, photographing or filming packages and their contents adds an unwanted step, but for me it takes maybe an extra 10 minutes a day, and has saved me quite a lot of money, not to mention angst over whether or not the buyer is telling the truth if I can't remember for sure what I packed (sometimes I do make an error, and my photos will show that too).
