ebay return postage of a faulty item

Hi Dodo,

It is clear that there has been a breach of contract on the part of the seller of the item. The seller appears to have acknowledged this and has offered to refund your payment upon return of the faulty item. I do not think that it is unreasonable to ask for the item to be returned so that it can be verified by the seller that what you are saying is correct.

The issue here seems to be whether the seller should be liable for the return postage costs. Selling online is covered by the Distance Selling Regulations and a copy of the regulations can be found using the following link

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2000/20002334.htm

My interpretation of the regulations is that if the goods are faulty or are not as specified in the contract then the seller must pay for the return postage costs. If the buyer cancels the contract simply because they have changed their mind I believe that they must pay the return postage costs.

If my interpretation of the DSR is correct then you can certainly bring a claim in the small claims court of the £10 - £15.00 in return postage costs that the seller is asking you to pay. However I would say to you what I say to all clients, is it really worth spending £80 - £150.00 in a court issue fee and all the time and effort that would be required to successfully file the claim to recover £10.00?

If however you think that it is worth it then you can file your claim online via:

https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome

I hope that this information helps.

Hi thanks for the information your response is really helpful.

Your last point over the £10 is very true and something that has made me reticient to pursue this any further. Should I go to the lengths of applying for a court summons it would obviously be due to a matter of principle.  However if the seller were to be found liable wouldn't that make me eligible to claim the court fees off him?

I wouldn't mind too much with sending the dvd player back if I was assured of the reimbursement of the P&P, but this seller is evidently dishonest.  Therefore he will claim that it isn't faulty, or wasn't faulty when he sent it.  I find it really frustrating that a seller can do this and get away with it.  eBay & Paypal have the facilities to reverse the payment immediately, but they are making matters worse by protecting him and holding me to ransom over P&P.  Its as though they think I would be profiting from it if the seller were held accountable for the return postage.  Had ebay followed the law and correctly governed who is liable for return postage then I would not be gaining any benefit, I would still be inconvenienced- but it seems to be assumed that I have changed my mind, rather than the fact that the item is faulty (I have offered to show pictures and videos that clearly show this which they have ignored).

Its got to the point though that I am of the mindset that I will not relent, the seller is mocking in his correspondence as he knows he doesn't stand to lose anything.  Because of this it makes me more inclined to go to court.

As a secondary issue;

The item was sent incomplete.  I have requested the proper equipment be sent to me which he has refused.  Is my right to additional packages containing the complete equipment covered in DSR also?

Kind regards

Hi Dodo,

You are correct, if you were to issue a claim and you were successful the court would award to a reimbursement of the court fee.

I must inform you however that even if you won the case, if the seller still didn't pay, you would have to go back to court to enforce the judgement, again this will cost money and take up your valuable time. Ultimately you may never be able to get your £10.00 back, the seller may wind up the company if it is a limited company or may be difficult to locate if he is an individual.

Have you tried to raise a dispute with paypal and asked them to reverse the transaction. Have you asked your bank or credit card company to do a chargeback? Going to court would seem to be an extreme course of action to pursue for such a small amount of money.

To answer your last question everything purchased as part of a distance selling relationship is covered by the DSR.

If you do decide to pursue the seller you will need comprehensive evidence on which you will need to rely on in court. You will also need the sellers full name, company details if a registered company and address.

Hi Gerard thank you for the reply.

I have raised the issues with ebay and paypal and they are both failing to clarify the issue of return postage.  They acknowledge that the seller has accepted that the item is faulty but they are requesting me to send it back.  They then ignore all of my following requests regarding a refund for the return postage.

I paid with the balance that was already in my Paypal account, so my bank card was not used.  I don't think Nationwide would have helped anyway, they are too busy cancelling my obviously genuine transactions off HMV & Play.com etc just so they can call me and try to scare me into buying online fraud protection.

I believe that I would have enough evidence for court, all I would need to do is plug it in and show it is in permanent standby and cannot be switched on.  Ideally I would ask the seller to prove otherwise.

As ebay are an intermediary party to this transaction do they have any liability?  I'm considering pursuing this angle as it may force them to apply some common sense to this dispute rather than sending me automated responses that do not address my complaint.  All I need is somebody at ebay to make a judgement based on law rather than their own policy, but it is proving to be incredibly difficult.

I did what I always thought was a pointless exercise...I picked up the phone and spoke to a foreign based call centre (luckily it was freephone).

I don't think I have ever gained satisfaction from calling these lines as the person on the other end never has the discretion to go against policy, but today surprisingly presented an exception.

Thanks again for the information, I repeated the main points from this thread to the teller and she over-ruled the ebay judgement and will be reversing the payment.  All this after I had threatened the seller with legal action and he was willing to defend himself.