Item Not Received Dispute but Buyer has signed for it which has been confirmed by Australia Post

[missing-pieces-china]

Hi everyone!

I sold a buyer a porcelain tea set over a month ago (39 days ago). I happened to check his feedback which I rarely do. His feedback raised a red flag to me so I decided to pay the additional money to send the item fully insured & with signature on delivery. One month later he messages me stating he never received the parcel.

He checked the tracking number which had said it had been delivered to the local mail center ( Alexandria ) which is quite some distance from where he lives in Waverley. It turns out that Australia Post did not track the item correctly & he saw an opportunity to exploit either AP or us. He lodged a Item Not Received Dispute with Paypal. I provided Paypal with proof that the parcel was lodged with signature on delivery. Paypal immeadiately closed the dispute in our favour.

We called Australia Post to do a parcel search. They stated that the parcel was actually delivered to his home address & signed for with the Buyers full name which is an extremely unusual ethnic name. Australia Post will be providing us with a copy of the signature sometime today.

Prior to establishing that this buyer was being fraudulent we gave him our home number to contact us tonight. I am not terribly sure how I should approach this phone call as we had promised to assist him with lodgement of a AP insurance claim. He has not responded to any messages I have sent him. It is clear that his actions are fraudulent. I want to report the matter to the online fraud dept in NSW but do not know how to go about it. All reference I have seen in the boards only points to a QLD contact.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 🙂

[*crikey*mate*]

The fraud department in Qld Police covers australia wide

[kopenhagen5]

The Online fraud squads office is based in Queensland for the whole of Australia.

If it was fraudulent on the buyers behalf you probably won't receive a call.

[green-gifts-mkd]

If you receive a message like that in future, just tell the buyer that you will endeavour to look into it and get back to them asap. Tell them that you have checked the online tracking but that Australia Post also keeps a lot of internal paperwork which does not show publicly online (I have rung AusPost a few times about deliveries and they can tell me much more than what the online tracking shows). Then see what they say, and go from there...

It seems like they were trying it on for size, hoping you would refund without investigating beyond the online tracking.

Let us know what happens if he does in fact call you.

[davewil1964]

Standard AP parcels are only tracked to the delivery centre. Click and Send tracks to the door.

Which, in this instance, is not relevant, as the buyer HAS received the item, but good info to have for next time.

[missing-pieces-china]

Thanks for everyone's input so far! It is greatly appreciated!!

I will certainly let you know if he does call. I have a feeling that he will not.

Is it worthwhile telling him that Australia Post have his signature or do you think that would only inflame the situation? Or should I just tell him to lodge the Australia Post claim & report it to the online fraud department? I haven't encountered a situation like this before so I am a little lost.

[davewil1964]

I would ignore him.

I assume he's on your BBL.

[Anonymous]

agree with davewil.. i'd ignore him. Not worth stressing yourself over this