RM parcel shows delivered customer says it hasn't arrived
Hi I had a message from a customer to say that her parcel didn’t arrive and requesting a refund. I have messages all the time saying exactly the same thing (always a refund, never a replacement) and when I check the Royal Mail tracking I can see the package has been delivered. I usually send a nice message back with the tracking number etc and suggesting it may have been left in a safe place or with a neighbour and I usually hear nothing more! In this case the customer is insisting that it hasn’t arrived and she wants a refund. I totally understand that mistakes happen and on occasions Royal Mail may deliver something to the wrong house and mark it has delivered. However, in this case I do not believe her, her story does not add up at all.
I wondered what other sellers would do in this case. The item was only £14.99 and so it is not going to bankrupt us if I send a refund. If I thought that she had genuinely not received it I would refund without hesitation but I am 90% sure that she is lying. I do not want to risk negative feedback for such a small amount but also feel that refunding scammers will only make the situation worse for us small businesses and it just isn’t fair! Any advice/suggestions from other sellers would be appreciated.
54 replies
Seller_y7wlA8Npjq1Or
When you say you have proof of delivery is that with a signature/tracking or the 2d code?
Seller_DROodOAYHftnc
You could try responding by saying that RM are now using GPS co-ordinates to track that parcels are delivered and you will contact them, RM, to check in case it has accidentally been delivered to the wrong address - this is neutral and non- accusing, just in case it is genuine !
If they are trying it on, this should weed them out and it might suddenly be found !
Seller_cKf1FSxFd8xZV
When I have had this recently I replied saying you should tell customer ‘…that they must take the matter up with the district delivery office as you have proof of delivery’. Supply this office name (which will show as you check for details of tracked record with RM) .This I believe will absolve you and would be supported by Amazon.
If you gave a refund without first doing this I guess YOU would not get any refund if you made a claim on RM.
If you have proof of posting i.e. a post office receipt but no tracking is available from RM, I have found RM will pay your claim (including postage) if you includes copies of the receipt/your email correspondence with customer/a copy of the Amazon order screen to prove the price. Claim form is available at the post office with a FREEPOST address.
Freddy29
Seller_ILTNDCj7DXuua
We’ve had an influx of these recently, there were some threads around amazon telling the customer they could get a refund as Amazon don’t recognise RM24/48 tracking references.
I generally send this out, which generally whittles out the chancers from people who actually haven’t received it
Hi customer apologies that you don’t appear to have received your order, it was sent on the date by 2nd Class Parcel with tracking reference ref and according to the Royal Mail website was delivered on date which you can see here https://www3.royalmail.com/[URL]
Please can you check with other members of the household to see if someone else took delivery of it, or whether its been put somewhere safe and you’ve not been told. As Royal Mail are showing delivered, (including the GPS data of where it was scanned), we would need to pass it back them to investigate fully and provide your details to them. Where necessary they may need obtain a statement from you to aid in their enquiries and/or legal action where fraud or theft is identified. Please have a check around and let us know if it still can’t be found
I include the GPS bit if it has it on the website or leave it out if not
Seller_Kd7y3upUf2G34
Thanks everyone. All super helpful, lots of great advice and lots to think about. I will be
very careful with my response.
Seller_zLn3YOkGOaTxU
The bug mentioned by @LTT is very much still an issue and is causing customers to message for a refund as the App tells them that the parcel is late or lost and to ask for a refund. This is why people are receiving so many messages - this message is displaying despite tracking being uploaded and the saying delivered. I have screenshots of this from helpful customers asking why we are telling them their parcel is lost when it arrived several weeks ago.
I have contacted Seller support on numerous occasions to report this as a technical issue and they just say that this is a customer issue and cannot help as they are only Seller support.
We are spending so much time replying to these messages, it is creating a bad experience for customers and it is encouraging unscrupulous customers to make claims. @Jessica_Amazon please can you escalate this internally. I can provide screenshots from affected customers if required.
Normally if you send a message of the type suggested by @LTT you don’t hear from the customer again. Occasionally they come back to you and say it was being shipped as a present and were concerned as Amazon said it was lost, but on checking they found it had arrived, and sometimes someone else accepted the delivery and put it away somewhere. It is those customers that helped us realise what was happening.
Seller_fcTGmQmvAjjig
I had a case where my registered delivery outside UK was late - very common during this corona year. Tracking showed it was on the way. Buyer escalated it and Amazon immediately refunded. Tracking showed it was delivered and signed the next day. Whoever signed for it didn’t use their own name (nonsense signature). Buyer insist it was not him who signed for the delivery and says he still has not received it. Is the GPS info possible tin international tracked deliveries also? Or what would you suggest?
Amazon is also counting this against my seller performance and still has not replied to my appeal (made more than a week ago).
Seller_UHzOFTmILX3zO
I had this relentlessly over lock down with my other online store, i don’t trust the RM at all any more and closed my business account with them. The sad thing is all these platforms say they love us (sellers), they don’t, the customer is always right when sadly they arent, or they are just dishonest. The RM tracked 48 is just a waste of money. We are treated like the rogue landlords of the online world when amazon/ebay/customers/RM never lose out. I changed all my inventory over to FBA so much easier, i highly recommend it
Seller_4EP71c7vPg4eY
We sell honest, delivery is done and signed, then they leave a feedback where is my item, amazon got all the details but will not remove the negative feedback, so all scammers work with amazon
Seller_3TuKPsB3ieWKC
There remains an issue with Amazon showed orders as ‘delayed’ or ‘running late’ in customer accounts, when tracking on the Royal Mail website shows the delivery date/time of delivery scan. This encourages buyers to claim that items have not been delivered.
More recently we are finding that orders which are not shown as delivered on the Royal Mail website, actually have been. We used to always assume that these packages had genuinely been lost as they had not been scanned on delivery. When we have stated that details will be passed to Royal Mail to investigate the missing package it miraculously appears, despite tracking not confirming this. We have had 3 of these in the past fortnight.
We still get around 5-10 customers a week stating that they have not had the delivery, when tracking shows that they have. A reply is provided with a link to the tracking, screenshot and time of delivery and 99% of customers never reply.
I am genuinely shocked by the amount of buyers on here who claim that items haven’t been delivered when they have. Amazon do not protect sellers at all from this.
