OT - Paypal refund to a zero feedback buyer
 

I had an interesting occurrence with ebay/Paypal recently. I had a buyer, who happened to have no feedback at all, purchase a $27 item from me a month ago. I shipped and then noted the tracking number on ebay's site. The package was reported delivered at their front door three days later. Never heard a word from the buyer. Three weeks later I get a notice from ebay stating that they want their money back and indicating that they never received the item. I responded immediately through ebay with the tracking number (again) and I noted that it was reported delivered three weeks ago and I had not heard from the buyer until now. ebay then says they will await response from the buyer. Today I get an email from ebay indicating that they will be refunding the purchase price and shipping to the buyer. I was about to come unglued when I read further. ebay is absorbing the cost and I will still have my funds released to me through Paypal. I find that interesting that ebay would cover the cost of the item themselves. Especially when the buyer had zero feedback and, to me, seemed to be scamming the system. I also wonder what ebay would do if it had been a $2,700 item.

Rob M

Hard to say. Either they scammed, or quite possibly someone else stole the package off their doorstep. I believe you should be covered though, either way.

Gps
 

I had one recently, as a buyer. Ebay and the post office said delivered, but I never received the package. I went to the post office and they used GPS to show that the package had been delivered to an address down the street. It's handy that they use GPS now to show exactly where they delivered the package.

I've had items say they were delivered and they weren't. My buddy who worked for the post office said that sometimes drivers scan a bunch of packages to save time. But if this GPS is widely used then it doesn't seem they could do that any longer?

In this case the time lapse seems to be the biggest red flag. I order a lot of stuff on eBay and I can certainly lose track here and there. But a legit new buyer with 0 feedback should be all over his first purchase. Obviously this wasn't a first time buyer or you would have heard from him. I find it interesting that he didn't contact you to ask about the item. Seems this would have also been a red flag to eBay.

The cost of $27 would take more time to deal with then just writing it off is my guess. If the item was $2700 it wouldn't have gone down like that.

I've had a similar situation a few years ago where ebay absorbed the cost of ~$500 item.

This actually happened to my girlfriend. She bought a Hermes bag from a seller in Australia for $2800. The seller also sold someone else a bag for $4200. The seller never sent anything, and seems to have disappeared, but ebay refunded both of us our money. I don't know if they ever tracked down the seller.