Monday, August 07, 2006

Misdelivered Mail or Dishonest Buyers?

Some of you may know that I've been selling some random, miscellaneous stuff on Amazon.com Marketplace. Well, last night I received an email from a buyer who wanted to know when/if I'd shipped his order. Mind you, I always ship things the next business day. But this is the second time that this has happened to me. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the first time a buyer emailed me (claiming he didn't receive his order), I initiated a refund, no questions asked. But now, I'm starting to wonder whether the guy lied to me? Because this second time around, I paid the extra sixty cents for delivery confirmation (it was a relatively expensive order). And when I plugged in the confirmation number at the USPS website, it indicated that the package was delivered on July 10th. That's nearly a month ago. So, I sent the buyer a very politely worded email, indicated that the package had been delivered, gave him the confirmation number and suggested that he talk to his postal carrier. But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I also asked him to confirm that I had the right mailing address, even though I printed the shipping label directly off of Amazon.com using the information he provided with the order.

But, now I'm wondering if people do this all the time? Buy something and then try to get their money back by claiming that it somehow got lost in the mail? Or is the USPS really that incompetent?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I recently purchased a used book via half.com. The seller was an active seller with many high ratings. A month went by and still no book. I checked the expected delivery date. A week after the later end of the range passed, I sent the seller notice that I did not receive the book. They refunded my money and told me that they apologize and if the book should happen to arrive later, to keep it without charge for the inconvenience.

That was over a month ago. Still no book. Maybe USPS really is that incompetent.