Item Returned By Courier As Not Collected From Parcelshop Is it Reasonable To Deduct Outbound And Return Postage From Refund?
This is about an FBM item and gets a bit in depth.
Overseas buyer purchases a gift (of significant value sold with free postage to buyer) for a UK recipient. Messages through that they want gift message included which was fine. Order dispatched to recipients home address as per the order and as the buyer had put the recipients mobile on the order the recipient got the delivery notifications.
Courier attempts delivery, no one was home so would normally attempt delivery the following day. In the meantime I can see from the tracking that the recipient has redirected the delivery to a local parcel shop presumably to collect at a time convenient for them. Upon seeing this I conclude the recipient has it in hand and think no more about it.
Almost three weeks later the courier returns said item to me as a 'return to sender' because the recipient hasn't collected it from the parcel shop in the allocated time. I haven't heard anymore from the buyer so they're probably under the same assumption I was that the recipient has the item.
The item is in the same condition as it went out so I have no problem refunding the buyer but have now incurred both outbound and return courier fees. Is it reasonable to deduct these from the buyers refund or for the sake of avoiding a negative review should I take it on the chin?
What would you do?
