Need Advice

[voidrabbit.livejournal.com]

Hello, a_b, I am in need of some advice.

Recently someone bought a pair of ears from me on eBay for a total of $17.00

I shipped out their item yesterday, with tracking number.

I received an email from the buyer today saying that the Paypal address provided was out of date. He had moved and apparently not updated his Paypal info. So I shipped his item to his previous home.

What do I do? I kind of don't think it's fair me for to make another and send it to the correct address. I think it's up to the buyer to make sure all info is up to date. However...the good business thing to do would to be remake the item and ship it to the correct one. It was just a simple pair of fox ears, after all. I think I'd be more pissed if it was a ooak item. Still, I'm losing money.

What would you do in this situation?

Would appreciate any help. Thank you!

Edit:

In fear of receiving negative feedback, I decided to just send him another if he agrees to pay the $2 for shipping.

Thank you to everyone for their input! I was happy to hear I wasn't the only one who thought about this situation the way I did.

Comments

[filthy-animal.livejournal.com]

As far as Ebay is concerned, it's up to the buyer to have their information correctly updated. I would search their TOS to see if you are at all required to fix this, but I'm pretty sure you're not. :x It's the buyer's problem, at this point.

[canis-ridens.livejournal.com]

As someone who forgot to update their Paypal address and bought an item off of eBay...

1) I did not expect the seller to ship another item for what was my fault. The seller can only be expected to use the shipping address provided; as far as I know, it's not possible for someone to telepathically connect to me and divine my true shipping address. The buyer is responsible for providing the correct address.

2) In my case, honest people were living in the house, and the item was returned to the seller. I asked what the shipping would be to get it sent to my correct address. The seller (nice to a fault, apparently) actually didn't charge me for the additional shipping, but they would have had every right to do so.

If the buyer isn't demanding that you pay for their mistake, and instead simply notified you of the issue, you can suggest waiting to see if the people at his old address return it, and quote him the cost for shipping it to his correct address. Hopefully, it will come back; if not, reasonably speaking, he's out of luck.

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

$17.00?

Have they been polite and apologetic?

Assuming they have been, I would charge a fee to remake the item, at LEAST the cost of supplies and a little in there for labour, and send him another pair as a good gesture. That is, not charging full price again, but not being fully out of pocket. Making a customer happy can easily be more important than taking a small loss, depending on the circumstances.

However, if he barged in unapologetically demanding a free pair of ears because of his own mistake, tell him he's free to buy another pair from you and you'd be happy to send them off. Either way, you don't OWE him anything. But don't be above a good faith gesture that might win you a repeat customer and positive word-of-mouth.

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

This is a good comprimise I think!

But yeah if my address was wrong, it'd be my bad.

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

It's not even REMOTELY required, not even a little, I really can't stress enough that the OP owes nothing here. But it's good business (and being nice) to do things like that. I know I'd be inclined to buy from people who were that generous.

Amazon earned me as a loyal customer after my headphones broke after only a few months. I emailed them asking if there was anything I could do, and even though it had been a third party seller that had sold me the headphones, they refunded my entire purchase price, shipping and taxes and all, within a matter of days, AND didn't require that I send in the old headphones. I was able to get a new pair for free and they get more business in general from me as a result.

That's the kind of business ethics I strive for.

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

Very nice! <3

[trimblecat.livejournal.com]

And that move just made them earn me as a customer! Fantastic service!

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

Mind you, I have no illusions that they care about me personally or anything, but I still wanna reward good behaviour! They would have been fully within their rights to tell me "tough shit". But they didn't.

[trimblecat.livejournal.com]

Even so, the fact that they provided good service in the first place is enough to win me over. Something like that gets rewarded, and the best reward I can give is my buisness. =)

[skulldog.livejournal.com]

I had a similar issue happen with a toy I sold awhile back. The buyer didn't say anything about changed address until about a week after I had shipped out the item.

I politely told them, they were SOL unless the item came back to me, and then I'd resend it, as long as they paid the new shipping costs, as it was not my fault they didn't make sure they had their address up to date. (It did come back, and buyer did pay the new shipping costs, everyone was happy)

You might do the same, tell them to wait another weekish, and see if the package is returned to sender, then you can just re-lable an re-mail it out.

If not, I'd at least ask them to pay the second shipping costs, as that part was their fault, and not yours.

[jurann.livejournal.com]

You didn't mention which shipper you used, but Fedex and UPS both offer mid-shipment re-routing for $10, I would advise the buyer that you can do that if they'll pay the fee. Otherwise the only thing you CAN do is wait for the package to come back and then re-send. Since it's the buyer's fault that you got the wrong address, I'd say it's their financial obligation. You did exactly what they (sic) told you to do.

[marus-puppy.livejournal.com]

That's a handy little service that I'm not sure many people know about. I'd definitely go for that option.

[spiffystuff.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose you shipped it by USPS? Maybe you can still contact them while it's in transit. Also, if they had their mail forwarded maybe it would still get to the right place...

[pteropusvenom.livejournal.com]

I say that is completely the buyer's fault. My mum sells clothing on eBay as a job, and she used to get buyers that did that quite frequently. They really were just ripping her off.

[torikonero.livejournal.com]

My address on Paypal goes to my parents' house as a default because they live near-ish to me and their mail system is much more secure than in the city where I live. However, as I do not want most of my items sent to them, I make sure to tell the person BEFORE I send money that they should send items to an alternate address. I also tell them after they send me a "got the payment!" e-mail, just in case. If they still miss it, then I deem it their fault (but even then, I'm not terribly unhappy). My system has never failed, and hopefully people with incorrect Paypal addresses will either fix their issue or make sure to give adequate notice beforehand.

eBay is a little fickle when it comes to customer relations. Most sellers overcompensate for mistakes or unusable items (broken or otherwise), and will refund the full price with no questions. You would probably have an easier time on the site if you re-made the ears and only charged minimally, if at all. Good luck!

[crssafox.livejournal.com]

Well, part of the issue is, from a seller standpoint, you aren't "protected" if you ship to an address other than the one listed on PayPal. So while most sellers would send it to your actual address rather than your parents' address as a courtesy, some of them may not do that because they've been screwed by scammers in the past, and know that PayPal won't side with them if they ship to anything other than the PayPal address.

For what it's worth, you can have multiple addresses listed on a PayPal account; I have both of mine (my mailbox and my home address) listed on PayPal. It defaults to my mailbox, so if I forget to change it over to my home address it might just take me an extra day to get out & pick up my package, but not a big deal. I've removed ALL old shipping addresses from my PayPal account because I don't want things mis-shipping!!

[torikonero.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I did not consider the liability issue that goes along with a non-official shipping address. I will change my main address to my apartment and keep my parents' on there as an alt. Thanks for the perspective! :3

[bonegrind.livejournal.com]

happened to me once too since their paypal address wasn't up to date and did not note me for awhile until after i shipped the item.
its not your fault they didn't keep it updated and if not that, they should have noted you the correct address when they bought the item.

i personally am still on the lookout for a replacement since my buyer was nothing but polite and their art is pretty admirable to me. it is pretty rare to come across scraps of hyena fur and anymore i find would be extra for me so i have no trouble sharing. not an OOAK either though.

[gearpony.livejournal.com]

As someone else said, if they were smart enough to give the post office a forwarding address, (It's only a dollar or something.) then this is a non-issue. The buyer can probably still do this, if the package hasn't arrived at his old address yet, and hopefully the post office will catch it and ship to his new address. Otherwise I agree with everyone else, he's sol.

[crssafox.livejournal.com]

It only costs money to give them a forwarding address if you do it online. You can stop in at the post office and they have post cards that you can fill out (also contains moving coupons for Home Depot & other useful stores) and they'll forward your mail for a YEAR.

Why someone would move without forwarding their mail "just in case" is beyond me, unless they're not aware of that service.

[solalia.livejournal.com]

Putting in a forwarding address with USPS is free, and was was previously mentioned you can have a package re-routed with UPS and FedEx, but it costs $10.

It is not the good business thing to do to eat it and send this guy another set of ears at your expense. It was the good customer thing to do to make sure his info was up to date and he didn't do it. Sucks for him. Maybe he'll learn a lesson and fix his info when he moves from now on.

[sovy.livejournal.com]

Just tell the guy to go to the old address to pick up his package or phone up the people living there now to hold the package or return it.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Can the purchaser cancel the payment at this point? That might affect how you deal with it.

If they can't, I'd be inclined to tell them to file a change-of-address form and hope that the package gets forwarded or returned 9in which case you'll re-send it once they pay the additional shipping).

If they can cancel the payment... well that's why I mostly will ONLY send stuff to the confirmed address on the Paypal account, since I'm covered then if i track the delivery. If they can cancel the payment, you might want to be more conciliatory... but, of course, if they cancel the payment because of THEIR error, they may well do it again no matter what you do, and then you'd be out 2 pieces rather than just 1.

It's a tough situation, and i sympathize.

[crssafox.livejournal.com]

I've had an issue with something similar, where a customer gave me the wrong address and it shipped to a vacant address.

Personally, I just re-made and re-shipped a new one - it was just a small tail, so not a lot of work, and kept the customer happy. Eventually I did get the original returned since the address was vacant and no one was receiving mail, and I just re-sold it.

I know this doesn't help much, but, it is all up to you at this point, what you want to do. Some things to consider are...:
Do you know who the buyer is? Is it someone "of influence" online - that is, do they have an DA/FA account, and many watchers? If yes, you might considering "helping" them out, "just this once." They might share their experience with others.
How hard was it for you to make the ears? My method for ears is a little more time consuming than tails, so I am okay sending out a second tail but not a second pair of ears. (Also, ears are more likely to get damaged if they're lost & bumming around the postal system for a month or two.) If your methods are simple and you're confident you can re-sell the original ears, you might consider sending a new set - buyer pays the secondary shipping, of course, since the first "mistake" was not your fault.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, while eBay allows buyers to leave negative feedback against sellers, apparently they have changed it so that sellers cannot leave negative feedback against buyers. So this person can be a jerk and leave feedback that says, "Seller sent to wrong address," you can't leave negative feedback on their account that says, "Buyer provided wrong address." It -could- reflect poorly back on you, but not so much on them.

Others have offered great advice - if you have tracking, it's likely you used one of the carriers that would allow you to re-route the package. If not, see if the buyer filed that change of address form for the post office to forward mail for them; if so, the package should automatically go to the new address, though it might take a little more time. In the meantime, perhaps make that second pair of ears, and if the buyer receives the original package, just put that second pair on eBay and make some more money. Couldn't hurt to have it on hand, just in case. :)