Here's an 'interesting' Paypal experience.

[007homevideo]

I vendor in Canada recently accepted my 'best price' offer of US$300 for an item listed for US$500 'Buy It Now (or make offer)'.

The vendor sends me an invoice for the item and states shipping as US$150.

I visit the 'Canada Post' website and, using the online 'postage calculator', I find that the package should only cost approx. US$72 to ship via the method which the vendor quoted. This means that the vendor has added approx. US$78 to the shipping.

I wrote to the vendor to suggest revision of the shipping component. The vendor responded by saying that the extra amount was to cover the Ebay & Paypal fees associated with the sale of the item. I then protested and requested that the vendor cancel the transaction. The vendor refused.

In order to avoid a 'non-paying bidder' strike, I paid the invoice with a view to lodging a Paypal claim for a partial refund of the shipping component that was in excess of the ACTUAL shipping cost.

The package arrived today, in a home-made cardboard box, with a shipping label reflecting the US$72 shipping cost.

I logged into Paypal and lodged a claim for the excess amount above the ACTUAL shipping.

Within a half-hour of lodging the claim, I received notification from Paypal stating that they had completed their review of my case and were unable to decide the case in my favour - without offering further explanation of course.

Despite 'excessive shipping' being one of the issues which Paypal deem as being grounds for a claim, and despite being able to provide a scan of the shipping label (on request), my claim was adjudicated to be - in the space of a half-hour maximum - untenable.

The question at the forefront of this outcome is this: if provable application of excessive shipping is insufficient to reasonably demonstrate 'excessive shipping', what then DOES prove it?

Helpful replies are most welcome.

[*tippy*toes*]

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@joethenuts wrote:

mmm  dont give mr tippy ideas  lol , you do realise if it ends up in court mr tippy could have half your ebay accounts   mmmm

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He can have them! Including the current selling fees for the month. Even if we divorced, he'd still probably try and use my eBay and PayPal accounts! He'd be stuffed though if I changed the passwords. He gets upset now as it is if I've changed them and gone off to work and not told him. I'll then go on my coffee break to discover 35 missed calls and text messages asking what the new passwords are. Norty Mr Tippy, I'm not going to give him the new passwords via text message!

In the event of a divorce, I think my conscience would force me to create an eBay and PayPal account for him. Might stop him constantly harrassing me if he wanted to buy something.

With that much paint on hand, it would have been hard for Mrs Nuts to select a colour. She probably wanted the one colour you didn't have!

[joethenuts]

poor mr tippy  cant buy anything online.i am sure mr tippy only purchases things that he needs anyway. like tools to fix the house  or things for his wife,

[*tippy*toes*]

He never buys me anything!

[the_great_she_elephant]

Mr Elephant is very well trained - or maybe just smart - he does have an account but he never uses it; he relies on me to do all our eBaying.

[digital*ghost]

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@aubeatlesvinyl wrote:

The reason that I "...thought (I was) going to try and claim excessive post after (I) agreed to it" was because this same type of situation occurred only a few months ago and I was indeed successful in a claim of 'excessive shipping'.

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I'd be interested to know if, in your previous dispute, it was indeed PayPal buyer protection that came into force and a refund of excessive shipping was granted after a PayPal decision, or whether it was granted voluntarily by the seller before escalation to a claim - keep in mind that the wording of PayPal emails is often misleading. I recently was on the receiving end of a PayPal dispute, and selected the option to provide a full refund of the item upon its return to me, however the PayPal notifications that were automatically generated stated that PayPal had completed their review of the case and found the buyer was eligible for a refund.

I would also point out that "excessive shipping" may be one of the choices for the reason behind opening a dispute, but if you read the User Agreement, which outlines precisely what is and isn't covered under the protection policies, you will find that the shipping component is not independently covered.

[lyndal1838]

Digi, is it still correct that the buyer can make a claim if they have paid for an expensive shipping method and the seller uses a cheaper method?

I know I was able to make a claim for that a long time ago but cannot remember what the paypal reason was.

[ooak3]

hi joe 

what mrs joe was realy saying was ' get the paint out joe and paint that blinking laundry '

hehe

[digital*ghost]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

Digi, is it still correct that the buyer can make a claim if they have paid for an expensive shipping method and the seller uses a cheaper method?

I know I was able to make a claim for that a long time ago but cannot remember what the paypal reason was.

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Not as far as I know. There's been a few instances described on the board where such things have happened and a PayPal dispute raised. At the dispute stage, some sellers have voluntarily issued the refund requested by the buyer, but in every other instance (that I know of) where the seller did not refund and the dispute was raised to a claim, the claim was immediately closed in favour of the seller.

In the Buyer Protection policy, there is no reference at all to postage services, and where they outline what is considered 'significantly not as described', the reasons refer exclusively to the purchased items - they also make clear that in cases where a SNAD case is found in favour of the buyer, a full refund of original payment is made (the clause is intended to make clear that they do not refund return postage costs, but by the same token it also serves to clarify that it is all or nothing - if a buyer raises a dispute for SNAD on an item rather than postage, and requests a partial refund, but the seller does not voluntarily refund that amount, or even respond to the dispute and PayPal decide the outcome, I'm 99.9% sure they will instruct the buyer to return the item to the seller for a full refund, they won't grant the partial refund).