Lost parcel advice

I had a very similar experience to the OP. Sold an item on ebay around the 12th December, made the mistake of posting via hermes thinking that the tracking gave me extra confidence vs. just using the Royal Mail. Item ended up getting lost, so raised a lost item claim (was bloody hard to find the packlink reference!) and to be fair to them, they payed out relatively quickly, but only £25 on a £125 item.

I had already refunded the buyer as it was 2 or 3 days before Christmas and wanted them to have a chance to buy something else, so all round ended up losing out. (my next issue is that as I refunded directly through paypal, i'm expecting to be charged the ebay fees on this too!)

Lesson learned though and I put it down as experience
 
Acme said:
I've had more issues with Royal Mail than Hermes. Never had an item sent via Hermes not arrive, and our local Hermes driver is an old woman in a Hyundai Getz full to the roof with parcels, everything always arrives in-tact and on time. :p

Yodel are the worst I've encountered. But even they seem to have improved around here. Used to be that whenever something got sent to me via Yodel i'd mentally write it off as not arriving in-tact or at all. But they've been fine more recently.

His first and only mistake was not insuring it for the full value.
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I think it's always luck of your local courier.

Here we have two local guys whom are both village residents, I have their phone number at ease disposal worst case a mention in the facebook group.

Same with our post woman, she's awesome.
 
I’ve had quite a few Hermes parcels get “lost” over the years, luckily it’s always been stuff I have bought rather than sold so less of a headache to resolve.
 
/\ndy said:
Again....hindsight. I should have used DPD, I basically just selected the first courier I could see on packlink. Royal Mail wanted £20 to post so that's why I avoided them.
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Whichever courier I use I would always make sure to cover the value of the item, it has nothing to do with hindsight, it's taking precautions. I don't agree with people saying x is bad and y is good, their all capable of losing your item so it's best to do what you can to protect yourself by covering the value of each item.
 
Acme said:
I've had more issues with Royal Mail than Hermes. Never had an item sent via Hermes not arrive, and our local Hermes driver is an old woman in a Hyundai Getz full to the roof with parcels, everything always arrives in-tact and on time. :p

Yodel are the worst I've encountered. But even they seem to have improved around here. Used to be that whenever something got sent to me via Yodel i'd mentally write it off as not arriving in-tact or at all. But they've been fine more recently.

His first and only mistake was not insuring it for the full value.
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I think it's the fashion to **** off hermes.

I've also never had an issue.
In fact I used them over the weekend before Christmas.

I had a load of stuff sent the week of 17th arrive after Xmas
But the hermes parcel I sent on Saturday got there in Monday
 
/\ndy said:
Again....hindsight.
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Well, to be fair, it's more common sense than hindsight. We'd all not bother with it until we knew we needed it for everything if we all had hindsight. We don't so common sense says to take it :)

/\ndy said:
I'll be using DPD next time I post something heavy. Hermes cust care is non existent, can't talk to anyone, their twitter feed a total shambles full of people complaining about the same thing.
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As others have said, Hermes have generally been pretty good with me, both sending and receiving. On the flip side, I've had DHL steal two expensive items from me now, claiming they were delivered, including the slightly famous block of cheese instead of an iPhone... I personally don't think any of them are particularly easy to contact, websites taking you round and round and Twitter agents just deflecting.
 
In a similar situation right now with InPost (who use Hermes) where the package has apparently been stuck in a warehouse somewhere since the 4th of Dec. I knew there would be no way this would be resolved over the Christmas period and the claim is still stuck on "Pending Courier". Does anyone know if there is anyway to offer a partial refund to a buyer that hasn't received an item or are you forced to do a full refund and hope it never turns up later?
 
/\ndy said:
  • I sold an item on ebay a few weeks ago, dispatched the next day (19th Dec) using Hermes via Packlink.
  • Noticed that tracking info hadn't been updated last week, only to say that its with the courier
  • I get a message from the buyer asking where it is
  • I query it with Packlink (Hermes would not deal with me direct) who say to log it as lossed
  • I file a claim that the item is missing - they confirm that they will now investigate this on my behalf and coordinate with Hermes (can take 30 days apparently)
  • The compensation covers only a 1/4 of what the item sold for
This leaves me in an awkward position

If I refund the buyer and then the item turns up, the buyer has no incentive to send the item back and I lose out + the compensation wouldn't go through
If I don't refund the buyer that could put me in hot water with my feedback score and ebay support backing the buyer anyway if they dispute it
The buyer can't be expected to wait 30 days to wait for a resolution, so what should I do?
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Are you sure this is a genuine lost item.

I have had a number of buyers doing this to me in recent times. Tracking just showing “we have it” and buyer claiming not received anything. Problem with Hermes is that they don’t record tracking at every stage. So chances are the buyer is trying to scam you. The delivery man tried to make the delivery but the buyer didn’t answer the door so the parcel was returned to Hermes depot. And a slip was left to the buyer. All of these are not recorded by Hermes so on their system it just show the parcel is still within their delivery system.

then as the buyer has the slip they have upto a month to claim it before Hermes will automatically return the parcel to seller address. And that’s when it gets interesting.

the buyer knows his eBay buyer protection kicks in from the date of the supposed delivery is which is the date he gets that paper telling him Hermes has just missed him. Now he has a limited window to make claim, to be exact eBay gives seller 5 working days to respond and a further 5 working days to resolve the dispute. So a total of 2 weeks before eBay does auto refund. So the buyer has to wait max 2 weeks for a refund, and then after refund, rings Hermes to schedule a delivery.

I know all of this because i suffered the same. The buyer tricked me in giving him refund. And then left me -ve feedback for not providing refund fast enough and gave lies (obviously rattled him as he was hoping for a swift conclusion). Normally I don’t check my feedback but this was an off chance, I checked feedback (5 days after the refund). And noticed it, so I thought I will go back to my tracking to see what’s happened to the parcel. And bang - it stared at me right there and then - delivered and received with a clear signature of the man’s name and the day after I refunded him as well. So I got in touch with eBay and PayPal, managed to get the feedback removed and eBay agreed to suspend his account on grounds of fraud. PayPal did nothing. I used eBay to ask for money back. He outright refused, claim it was his son collected the parcel and he didnt know etc.

anyway long story short, I had his address, lodged a crime with the met and the anti-fraud police (whatever they are called). Send them to him. He got rattled and paid me. This bloke lives somewhere in Norfolk.

then the subsequent times, this happened to me, I made it very clear that I won’t refund unless it is after the 35days have lapsed and I just keep in updating the dispute with messages from the courier investigation and tracking until either they relent and collect the parcel or they actually let the parcel return back to me. But all of them chose the first ie receiving the parcel.
 
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Hermes don't allow collections from depots. So no idea what you are talking about. It is automatically returned to sender after a third attempt.

You can collect from parcelshops but the sender needs to select the parcelshop it goes to when sending.
 
muon said:
Hermes don't allow collections from depots. So no idea what you are talking about. It is automatically returned to sender after a third attempt.

You can collect from parcelshops but the sender needs to select the parcelshop it goes to when sending.
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Hang on, I never said collection at depot!

Hermes won’t automatically delivery either they have option for rescheduling delivery in their cards.

The scammer can schedule a date quite a long time down the line within the month.
 
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pc-guy said:
Sorry I don’t mean collect from depot. That was Royal Mail. Hermes won’t automatically delivery either they have option for rescheduling delivery in their cards.

The scammer can schedule a date quite a long time down the line within the month.
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No. With Hermes you can't select dates.

You ever used Hermes before trying to accuse the OPs buyer of something?

edit:

Also Royal Mail are very good with tracking as long as it is tracked. You would see a failed delivery attempt and a reschedule request available. ebay don't give refunds automatically in these scenarios.

The buyer would have to collect and return it back to you for a refund.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policie...licy/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy?id=4210

"Items not collected by the buyer" are not covered by the Money Back Guarantee.

I've even had a ebay CS agent offer to decide in my favour because of this. However, I felt sorry for the buyer as I didn't think it was entirely their fault (but the courier's) so I refunded them anyway.
 
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