Buyer dishonesty!
Hi all,
I sell low value items into a competitive marketplace and a lot of my orders are sent without tracking with Royal Mail.
Last year I took advantage of opening a Royal Mail Business Account as I read that marketplaces were accepting 2d Large Letter barcodes as valid tracking and Proof of Delivery.
If any Buyer now orders more than one item from me I send it generally as a RM48 Large Letter even though it could be sent as a Letter, simply for the tracking.
I still get Buyers claiming NOT to have received their deliveries even with tracking showing delivered!
On another marketplace I report these Buyers (for what good it does!), Amazon doesn’t appear to have this feature, or have I not discovered it yet?
Buyer dishonesty is the worst part of my otherwise very enjoyable profession and after years of doing this I still struggle with the concept of people stealing from me!
0 replies
Seller_KQwXr5kY5oIPO
Welcome to Amazon
The buyer is King, the buyer can do no wrong, the buyer will be believed above all things.
Seller_DQfkgZNWeH1xJ
Hi
Actually some items really aren’t delivered even though they say so. Its an increasing problem we’re seeing with the 2D barcode.
Im right this moment asking RM to open an investigation into a “delivered - non delivered” item.
What i’ve noticed though is that when an investigation is opened, the item gets delivered!
Seller_5F9Y9aIGBCnOo
I’m exactly the same. It boils my blood every single time I get a message asking where their package is.
Royal Mail deliver 75 million items a week and I get at least 20 INR’s per week, which means by those odds I’ve got more chance of winning the lottery 3 times a week than RM losing my items during postage.
It’s just one of those things you have to put up with i’m afraid.
Seller_5YnUBBEgHZOv5
I’m not disputing what you’re saying, as we’ve had a few of these and I’m sure a proportion of them are customers ‘trying it on’, but some of them really are genuine. We have an incident the other week where a buyer swore blind that they hadn’t received their order even though the (RM 48 large letter) 2D code showed it as delivered. We contact Royal Mail on the 08457 950 950 business number, and they looked at the GPS records, and found that the package had been ‘delivered’ at a GPS location 3 streets away from the customer, so the customer was telling the truth, and Royal Mail were the ones at fault.
The only advice I’d have for reducing the number of these is to respond with a link to the tracking showing it as delivered, then asking the customer if they could check with other family members or householders to ensure that it’s not been put in a ‘safe place’ before you raise it with Royal Mail and ask them to check the GPS records. That seems to weed out all but the more aggressive (and potentially truthful) ones (as at least half of these miraculously discover the package when you mention GPS and investigation) - and then you can get the GPS checked on the ones where they’re still convinced that it’s not there.
Fundamentally, we take the chance on low value items that this will happen, and it is incredible frustrating, but it can be the only way, so we just factor a small percentage into our overall costs to allow for some loss/wastage.
Seller_qCHuTn5dPLaer
I feel your pain. Welcome to amazon as the previous poster rightly noted! Amazon don’t give a monkey and can’t care less, buyer is their god. Ebay is more sellers supportive than these guys. Anyway, returns and lies hugely depend on what you sell and how you sell it. We are also selling low value items on amazon and I had exactly the same experience in the beginning and not only on amazon but many other platforms as well. We have managed to sort this problem slightly by offering better service, like sending by 1st class rather than 2nd class and by changing the packaging to a better looking one. Now, when buyer is expecting to get the item in 3 days but instead getting it next day (in most cases by normal 1st class RM) and in a good looking package, they’re happy and they are less likely to feel bad and think they have overpaid for the rubbish they received and which they were waiting “for ages”.
Now we battle with new issues like customers complain that they received 2 items instead of 3 or 4 instead of 6 
That is hard to check really when you pack so many items per day and they use it as another opportunity for lies here. Also, some “smarter” customers return wrong goods to Amazon FC by FBA lol. When you request to destroy you don’t know what’s in there, thinking it’s your damaged products. Hell, no! Recently we requested quite a big batch to be sent to us rather than being destroyed and to our surprise we have seen so many different items inside the boxes, gosh, I couldn’t believe my eyes really. All I was suggested to do by Amazon next time is to ask FC Team to send me pictures what’s inside the boxes before destroying/dispatching. I must admit we ask them to do that for a different occasion few months ago and the picture they sent was a thumbnail size like it was done by Nokia 3210, and we had to wait for one picture for a good couple of weeks.
So brace yourself, that is Amazon for you. No proper support for sellers, all by yourselves. Do not get sucked in too much with amazon but better spend more time on advertising your own website/online shop instead.
Seller_YSVJTvJFHSin4
Not all of these may be dishonest. I used to live in a house whose address was 4 XXXX Court, YYYY Street. There was a completely separate address called 4 YYYY Street. Both had the same postcode. Predictably, the other address got lots of our mail because it was on the main street and not off it. When the residents of 4 YYYY Street started to put our misdirected mail through our letterbox they wrote snotty notes with it saying GET YOUR MAIL DELIVERIES SORTED OUT. But there was nothing we could do about it: our mail clearly had our address on it, but the lazy postman just kept putting it through their letterbox.
As things developed, he often delivered signed for items there too and got them to sign for them. They often did so, but after a while they seemed so annoyed that they stopped telling us they had our mail and just either retained it or started putting it back in the postbox with NOT AT THIS ADDRESS written on it (this was more trouble than putting it through our letterbox, but these were awfully snotty people).
To cut a long story short, even if delivered and signed for, it is not entirely unlikely for a piece of mail to have been delivered to the wrong address in cases like these. Not all of your customers who say they did not receive an item of tracked mail will necessarily be lying.
Seller_5YnUBBEgHZOv5
@Homecare_Essentials1 - that did used to be the case, and I still get customer service reps at Royal Mail who will tell me that, but they do have a new feature that enables them to do it, it’s just that they haven’t received training on it. I had this happen on a call to them literally this morning, and they were able to bring up the data to confirm the GPS records.
So, they will check, it’s just that sometimes you need to remind them that they do have that facility. I got the investigation info from them on the phone this morning - the lady I spoke to said they don’t do it, then when I mentioned that a previous colleague had done it, she checked with the person next to her and said ‘oh, apparently, it’s a new thing ans they’ve just shown me. Here you go!’ and gave me the info.
Seller_l78koE9kGCu59
I totally agree but the bottom line is it is literally part of the job and the pricing. I worked a bif name Bricks n Mortar store for years and you literally wouldn’t believe the theft / loss levels. One of our 5 flagship stores had an “acceptable” (in other words NO investigation was performed if below this figure) of £1M per year!!! Just that ONE store out of 260+. We had 7 security guards, 2 store detectives and a million pound camera system with Police almost always within yards.Not to mention the 50+ staff who were all very security aware and would often pull in a theif on their own. It’s crazy to say but totally true that theft / loss is as much a part of every business as sales and taxes. EVERY business. Sucks duunit!
Seller_THte9Ti6D9kqC
I feel you! It’s always been a pain and it will probably always remain a pain.
To give Amazon a credit, they handle it significantly better than eBay.
- We can offer partial refunds, we can dispute and represent our side of the story
- There are some mechanisms for suspending buyer accounts on Amazon
- Direct claims with Amazon be it FBM, FBA, SFP (Safe-t)
Also to give buyers a credit not all issues reported are always due to a dishonest buyer, we had number of couriers delivering items to wrong addresses and being marked as signed by the original recipient which is not true, post office failures (notorious for that) and in some cases or own failures as a seller.
I also agree with you for lower cost items where market is extremely competitive - is the category that we have the highest number of lost items. Typically you can file the claim with Royal Mail but it’s an absolute nightmare and takes good 3-5 weeks to get you £10.00 for an item that you’ve sold for £15.00 - not sure if it’w worth doing it but we do it for a piece of mind.
Seller_N4r2nyILl5yH0
Another one only this morning!
This time Buyer leaves a poor Feedback rating claiming non-receipt!
I investigate further and the order was sent Tracked and yes, you guessed it delivered!
Obviously, I have had the negative Feedback rating and comments removed but REALLY???
