First time seller, items damaged in transit

[gesal_4755]

Hi,

This is my first time selling on eBay. I sent a watch overseas to a buyer who is claiming one of the dials has been damaged in transit. I am a bit lost with what happens going forward & no matter where I search on eBay I can’t just seem to just online chat or call with an agent. Due to my first time selling, eBay has my

money on hold currently. From what I’ve searched, I think the buyer needs to lodge a return & once they do that I have to pay the postage fees back to me which will take another month due to being overseas.. do the eBay fees get scrapped since there was no successful sale? And will eBay directly refund them as they are the ones holding the money?

And to make matters worst, when sending it over to the UK the return address was an old one that wasn’t even on my eBay account anymore, however each time I tried to amend it, eBay would charge me for a new shipping label (despite only using 1 - I have since been able to cancel the others). It has been a very stressful process trying to send something that was once very sentimental to me. I understand I need to cut my loses and realise I’ve lost money instead of making a sale & I will not use eBay again in the future. But can someone please tell me the correct way going forward? 

[padi*0409]

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@designers*n*more wrote:

If the buyer has opened a dispute, do not refund the buyer until you receive the item back. If it’s not in the condition you sent it you can claim a portion of the sale fee back from eBay.

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In addition to that, the listing clearly shows the serial number of the watch if that doesn't match the returned one then the OP should win the dispute, unless the buyer has had a jeweller swap out the faces for one they already have.

[springyzone]

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@etb321 wrote:

Dial damage on a watch?  My first thought was aren't the dials under a glass or quartz cover? Assuming it was sent in a box with some bubblewrap it's hard to imagine how dial damage could occur during transit.

 I agree with asking for a photo of the face of the damaged watch. It may be helpful in that you recognize the watch as the one you sent.

Also be aware, unless the buyer's claim of damage is true, what you receive back is unlikey to be what you sent.

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Yes, that was my first thought too, that it was odd you could get dial damage without damage to the outer case or glass.  It does sound a bit suss.

Brickworksmarket, that was interesting information about how to get the ebay fees back.

So far, in summary, it is sounding as if gesal needs to let the buyer open a claim, then follow exact ebay procedure to accept a return, and to be careful not to refund the buyer till the watch has arrived back and been verified as the same watch.

Then he can apply for a fee refund.

[siddieswans]

My concern is (and please tell me if I am wrong, because I would love to know otherwise) that for INAD dispute the seller has to send the buyer a return postage coupon, and you can't do that for an overseas sale.  (The one International  INAD  I had I just refunded in full without asking for the item back, because I couldn't see a way to do this. I had gone through all the steps of asking the buyer what I could do to make them feel happier - ie partial refund, but they demanded refund in full.)

[brickworksmarket]

Hi, sorry for the confusion, if you look below the username you can see I was responding to another poster and not directed at you. You can click that username and it will take you to the post in question.

[springyzone]

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@siddieswans wrote:

My concern is (and please tell me if I am wrong, because I would love to know otherwise) that for INAD dispute the seller has to send the buyer a return postage coupon, and you can't do that for an overseas sale.  (The one International  INAD  I had I just refunded in full without asking for the item back, because I couldn't see a way to do this. I had gone through all the steps of asking the buyer what I could do to make them feel happier - ie partial refund, but they demanded refund in full.)

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I have read that too, that a seller cannot issue a postage label to an overseas buyer. It is all so much more complicated, unfortunately, when the buyer is not in Australia.

As I am not a seller these days, one of the other boardies will need to outline exactly how it is done but I am assuming that a seller can ask or work out the postage cost to Australia and send that to the buyer, who would then need to post it back?

It would require the buyer & seller working together to some extent.

I guess the other way would be for the buyer to post it back, show receipts and for the seller to refund everything at the end, but that would require a lot of faith on the part of the buyer.

If I were the seller in this case, I would definitely be getting onto ebay & getting their advice on all the exact steps to take. I think if you get onto chat, there is a record sent to you of your correspondence, or there used to be.

It looks to me as if gesal has sold a watch that was close to $500 in value, which is too much to write off without a fight.