Last week I had an offer on one of my records from a customer in the Emirates with an accommodation address in the U.K. I accepted the offer and as suggested by the eBay prompts at the time, I then immediately sent the buyer his invoice. I noted that the buyer had that accommodation address in Berkshire in the U.K. and I harvested that address for the postage label. I invoiced him AUS $35 for tracked and insured air mail postage.
I had never dealt with this customer before, nor had we ever had contact before.
He took a few days to pay, but when he did, I sent the parcel tracked and insured air mail to the U.K.
The next day I was paid by eBay for the transaction, but instead of part of the $35 air mail postage, eBay had allowed only $7 which is my domestic postage charge. At this stage, I am the best part of $28 out-of-pocket!
I spent almost an hour on the phone to eBay yesterday, talking to 2 different operators, without any success whatsoever.
What happened is that in the time between when I invoiced him at his U.K. accommodation address and the time he paid, he changed his address to his Sydney accommodation address, and the eBay system therefore changed the $35 international postage fee which I had invoiced, to the $7 local postage fee.
At no stage was I advised of the change of address, nor did I after the invoicing event, at any stage think that I needed to check his "current" address. The eBay operators claim that this situation of changing an address between the time of sale and the time of payment is not possible, yet that is exactly what happened!
After 20 years of selling on eBay, the attitude of the 2 operators yesterday in claiming that I must be mistaken, doesn't sit well at all. As a retired accountant and auditor, I know how systems do and should work, and this shows that there is a bug in the eBay system, and that eBay will not acknowledge that.
records4jukes, Hobart, 2 July 2025.
