Buyer demanding refund for slow Express Post

[dave4110]

Hi everyone, I recently experienced a situation where the buyer bought an item and paid for Express Post. I sent out the item with Express Post the next day, but the item took about six business days to reach him, because his postcode was outside of the Aus Post Express network According to Aus Post, so it became a regular Parcel Post delivery.

Prior to the receipt of the item, the buyer opened a INR case. While the case was open, I noticed that I couldn't do a partial refund in eBay for the Express Post cost, eBay only allowed full refund for INR cases. I went to PayPal and saw that PayPal has held that transaction, so I wasn't able to do any refund through PayPal either.

I called eBay and PayPal, and was basically bounced between these two companies, Paypal saying the case was opened outside of PayPal so they can't do anything (even though they put a hold on that transaction), and eBay saying for INR they can only do full refund, so partial refund needs to be done in PayPal.

In the end the item was received by the buyer, and the case was resolved. But has anyone else experienced something similar?

[clarry100]

We had a similar experience about 6 months ago. But in our case it was only one day late. Luckily the buyer was not so displeased and did not open a case against us
I asked my local PO why it should be a day late and they could not explain the delay so they handed over a free satchel.
So we refunded our buyer their express fee and they were happy about that
So a good outcome for us.
So you might want to take up the issue with your local PO and ask about a free satchel. They should do it because you have paid for express but only received standard mail service.
When we get express mail orders now we check if the postcode is outside the network and advise the buyer that it may not be next business day due to this reason. But they are normally not more than one extra day and often still next business day anyway.

[lane-ends]

Typically if they are outside express zone, it goes express as far as nearest center, then standard the remainder. So normally it is still likely to be quicker than regular. Aps guarantee is simply a replacement satchel.

[lyndal1838]

Unless both sender and receiver are in the Express Zone there is no guarantee that the parcel will be delivered overnight and no compensation available.

[dave4110]

Any difference in buying the Aus Post Express satchel VS paying for Express Post when creating the postage label in eBay?

[collect247]

Cost$$

[justajunk]

I had an item sent by Express take two weeks to get to the other side of the country since it was sent over a long weekend period. Buyer didn't complain or open a case fortunately, but he did leave one star for Postage Time, which eBay removed since I had uploaded valid tracking with 24 hours of posting the parcel.

I still take that though as a lesson learnt the hard way. I likewise rang up Australia Post and the lady I spoke to admitted that I wasted my money with the additional express postage charge since a parcel between our postcodes would always only be sent as a regular parcel. Lots of stress and the end result? I now never use express AND I write in my listings that Express post is not available. The things I send can be sent as letters, so (under the current system) they usually only take a few days to get to the other side of the country. I've even sent one customer five large letters once to avoid having to deal with the stuff-arounds of fitting all the items into a super-slow parcel.

[dave4110]

After this experience, for the next buyer that purhased and chose Express Post, when creating the postage label in eBay, I saw it has a note in there to say the destination postcode is not in the Express Post network. I didn't notice that before, not sure if buyers see that when they choose Express Post??

Anyway this time I sent a message to the buyer about it first, and he replied was fine with Express Post even it may end up with Parcel Post delivery speed. Seems like sellers need to check first to cover our butts in case these types of disputes happen. Sellers seem to cop it from buyers even though it's obvious it's outside of seller's control or responsiblity.

[dave4110]

The other issue is that there seems to be a catch-22 when trying to give partial refunds to the buyer. This is the first case I've dealt with as a seller, so this INR case means eBay allows only all-or-nothing refunds, and PayPal freezing the transaction so partial refunds can't be done in PayPal.

I was basically told by eBay to use PayPal to manually transfer money to the buyer to do the partial refund (which means I need to cover the PayPal fees or otherwise the buyer will surely complain that the refund is less than what he paid me). It also means I paid PayPal fees twice, once for the transaction, and another for the manual transfer to refund the postage cost.

eBay said because PayPal is a separate company now, so that how it will work from now on.

Anyone else had issues doing partial refunds after the eBay/PayPal split?

[black*poppy]

When you refund the buyer, you won't pay any extra paypal fees. Paypal actually refund that part of fees you gave already paid (2.4 % or whatever it is of the amount you are refunding)