Sold a nice casio G-shock on ebay a while ago and posted it on the 8th June. Hasn’t arrived and the buyer has not unreasonably asked for a refund. It has now been 8 working days and Royal mail won’t talk about compensation until 10 working days.

Any chance of it turning up in the next few days if it has taken this long? Otherwise I will just pay up now.

Watch was sold for £82 but Royal mail compensation (2nd class signed for) only covers £50 (I should have read the small print). They also say watches are excluded if are made of precious metals so I’m alright there!

Yep. Seemed to do the same for me with a vintage and very rare Nikon F mot. No signature or evidence of delivery. Not covered for the full value of the camera. My fault really.
Lucking the camera had turned up and been put in the guys recycling bin by his father who had managed to evade his dementia carer and thought he was being helpful.

I’d wait until the 10 days, this avoids the guy getting his money back and a watch for free.
Also means you only lose £32 instead of £82.
That’s not being unreasonable.

10 days is perfectly reasonable.

At present its quite plausible it’s delivered, unsigned because posties aren’t keen on catching the virus and your buyer knows this and is trying it on.

10 days, reffer to RM, credit the buyer in full once RM say its lost. Keep the buyer informed throughout.

I’ve had to explain to quite a few people that the current situation means that post is taking longer than usual and that ‘delayed’ is not the same as ‘lost’.

Not RM but Parcel Farce have “lost” two parcels of mine containing bike parts, one a wheel that somehow didn’t get scanned in on collection (was in a box so would have looked like a pair of wheels) and the other some parts coming from Spain, which made it to the PF Preston depot and no further. It’s my belief that there’s systematic pilferage going on at RM and PF.

Heavy workload is a convenient excuse but the PF guy is still collecting every day from my local post office.

Nothing actually lost but some stuff by RM has been taking much longer in the last few months. Ebay will let it run up to about a month won’t they?

Give it at least another week

I’ve had to explain to quite a few people that the current situation means that post is taking longer than usual and that ‘delayed’ is not the same as ‘lost’.

I’ve had to do the same with one or two things I’ve sold over the last few weeks. Most buyers have been fine about things taking a few extra days but one was emailing me every 2-3 hours after what he’d bought (a Scalextric car) didn’t arrive the next day after posting with Royal Mail. I gave him the tracking number so he could see it was on it’s way and the big message on their website stating there would be delays but he continued to email me every few hours. It turned up 6 days after posting. Wasn’t a kid either, some guy who worked for a big tech company going by his email address.

Just tell your buyer you are relying on Royal Mail declaring it lost first, understandable with current delays. Until then it’s still in transit.

And always use special delivery in future. The buyer pass the postage (which would only be a few quid more for a small item) so makes no difference to you other than that you are fully covered

I’ve had 2 RM packages go missing in the last few weeks, when I’ve only had one go missing out of 500+ in nearly 2 years previously. Both were signed for – scanned in at local Post Office but didn’t even make the depot. Signed For deliveries are taking up to 10 days.

Cheers for the wise words above. I won’t panic and will tell the buyer to hold tight until next week. It does look like it might still turn up. Fingers crossed!

Otherwise, all that effort for -£32. (OK, my fault for not using the right service)

Otherwise, all that effort for -£32. (OK, my fault for not using the right service)

You might not even get the £32. IIRC if the value is greater than the insured value then you get nothing.

Ordered some simple exercise bands last month for my daughter, they took over two weeks to work through the system from Wolverhampton to Nottingham, local sorting office were great and tracked it down for me as being stuck in Brum. So some things are taking a while longer to work through.

It turned up! 10 days after posting it was Delivered to Customer Service Point. Think that means the local Delivery Office. I wouldn’t call that delivered myself. I told the buyer and he has withdrawn the Non Delivery Ebay Case so assume he must have it! No feedback or reply directly. I hope he is happy with it.

FWIW – Wiggle/CRC took 4 months to refund me after a parcel I returned using their collect system at ASDA went missing. The parcel was registered as dropped off, but then nothing. I had to “wait for us to search and confirm it’s missing” before they would refund.

I used that Asda return point before Christmas. I noted that you could simply reach in and pull out parcels as the door is rubbish and you can see inside!!!

I had ordered some bike parts which were dispatched according to the email sent to me. Three days later I got a ‘package deliverd’ email from RM but no sign of it anywhere. I went to the collection offce as I wondered if the postie had fogoten to put a card through the door as I wasnt home at the time. The guy there said “give it a few days” which I thought was odd given I had been told the parcel had been deleivered. Notified the sender through their customer service, RM seem to make reporting this kind of thing hard! 4 days later my parcel arrived.