So I should be £3.00 worse off after returning an item which was falsely advertised?

What should I have charged back? To add, I emailed him a copy of my response letter, and this is his response below. What do you make of this?! It seems completely bonkers IMO. I have not received this "third party royal mail" postage label he talks about buying on 3rd March, as I've told him many times now. All I've received is a few messages from eBay, none of which contained any postage labels. Nothing of the sort has arrived in my PayPal account. He seems to be ignoring ebay's money back guarantee returns policy, for items "sold not as described" (as he readily admits below.) so I assume I am in still in the right here? Private and confidential. Without prejudice. Hi I have not read your email as I do not accept electronic communications in regards to this dispute which sits alongside your earlier request in relation to not communicating again, please forward anything you feel appropriate in writing, Please consider what you have sent via email as unread. No future correspondence will be accepted or read/replied via any electronic methods i.e. email, unless of course you are confirming you have used the postage paid label sent to you on March 4th 2019 by eBay to return my item in which case I will consider this issue resolved. failing that I have no alternative than to seek redress via the legal channels. The facts remain Feb 20th 2019 you requested a refund fair enough I had not seen the damage as it had sat in its packaging since purchase so I just took pictures and posted on eBay, then later that evening you requested a postage paid label, at that time I had no responsibility to refund the purchase price of the item until I received the item back however as i was unable to find the returns postage section on my phone I took it upon myself to refund the amount paid, I repeatedly requested you send the item back and repeatedly requested you send me your PayPal and postage details so i could not find how to sort the returns postage out. On each occasion you refused, eBay confirmed to me which was relayed to you that as I had given the refund they could not do anything about postage labels so again I repeatedly asked again to no avail, to which you then sent a link to a useless article. eventually after nearly two hours I got in touch with eBay and explained the situation On March 3rd 2019 whilst online with eBay I purchased under the explicit instructions and guidance of eBay a postage paid label from a 3rd party and emailed it to eBay at their request, they inform me they have sent this to you alone with numerous messages for you to return the item to me. For the avoidance of any doubt. some undeniable facts! 20th Feb 2019 refund requested and given on Feb 21st 2019 electronic evidence available to prove this beyond any doubt. Item not received details outlined above. 3rd & 4th March following repeated requests for you to send me postage costs and PayPal details a Postage label sent to you from eBay emails and chat transcripts evidence beyond any doubt. Receipt for the cost of my purchase of a 3rd party Royal Mail postage paid label beyond any doubt Item still not received I have involved eBay legal department and a relative who is a solicitor as i will be requesting any emails, chat transcripts or other documents relating to this issue including very specifically the postage paid label proof it was purchased by me and sent to eBay to be forwarded to you. Your whole position is revolving around your hunch/opinion you would lose out on less than £3.00 postage yet not satisfied with me refunding the whole amount or my explanation which I did not have to do until i received the item back, the evidence is very clear I have as previously explained . I have fulfilled my obligations completely in terms of giving you a full refund and paying for a postage paid label which was sent to you by eBay, yet you still have my property. You ave two choices, return my item which you are withholding without permission despite having a refund and a postage paid label or keep it in which case i am left with no alternative but to follow the legal avenues available to me. Time spent on this email 15 minutes, charges to be added as per my letter, this will be added to the final owed amount, a statement will be sent to you periodically by Royal Mail recorded delivery. Regards

Hi there. Please help! Long story short, I bought a compass from ebay, listed as "new" for £27.95 total (£25.00 for item, £2.95 for postage) Arrived scratched and damaged. Informed seller, and sent photos showing damage, requesting to return it for a refund as per eBay return procedure. They initially refused a refund saying "returns not accepted" and said there was nothing wrong with the item. I quoted a bit of eBay's returns policy for items sold not as described. The seller, suddenly, manually sent a refund from within PayPal for £27.95 only but failed to send me any funds to cover return postage/or provide a paid return postage label. I suspect he purposely did not adhere to eBay's returns policy guidelines, and instead did things manually via PayPal, in order to later cheat me or otherwise cause problems during the return postage. Of course, if you transact outside of eBay's procedures and system, then you are not covered. eBay messages sent back and forth. I repeatedly requested he created a paid refund label. He demanded I send it at my own cost, and once he received the compass, he would refund any incurred return p+p fees at a later date. First he said he couldn't create a label, when I linked him to eBay's customer support page so he could find out how to do it, he then claimed he "didn't have time", and finally said it wasn't possible because he'd manually sent a refund. By this time, the tone of his messages had become quite demanding and pressurizing. From past experience with difficult eBayers, I believed he was going to try something, as I had listed a high-end camera bag on eBay myself and the approx. market value was about £175. I "blocked" his eBay account from bidding on my bag. Sure enough, literally immediately after I sent him a very firm, final message telling him to send me the return postage costs before I would return the compass, my camera bag received bids from 2 eBay users who had variations of his uncommon surname, and also his original seller account's username. One of the accounts was created that day and had zero feedback, the other had a feedback history of about 20 or so. I confronted him about it, in a final message the following day, and he said he knew nothing about it, but his "wife" may have been "causing mischief". I reported him to eBay. Since then he sent a few more messages but I told him I wasn't interesting in communicating further, and the offer to return it still stands, but only once I have received funds to cover the return postage cost. This was all over the period of about 4 weeks, and I still have the compass and i'm still awaiting funds from the seller to cover return postage fees. Received a letter before claim from the guy today. He says he will seek to claim £30+ per hour for his time, based on his salary, if it goes to court, and will need to travel from his home in England to Scotland should I decide on a Simple Procedure here. In his letter, he claims he has "offered" to pay for the return numerous times, which is inaccurate as he wants me to post it first, then wait for reimbursement at his discretion at a later date via PayPal. I responded at length to his letter, sticking to the facts and re-stating my position. Of course, I have proof of all the communications via eBay messages, and also his shill-bidding activity on my camera bag which of course only served to make trust his word even less. Please can you advise what I should do in this case, and if he does decided to take it to court, given the information i've provided, how do you think it would play out? Many thanks in advance for your help, and sorry for the length of this. Cheers!

Hi there I wonder if you can help with this. It seems fishy to me. My fiancee is a support worker (supporting disabled people who have their own tenancies) for an agency on a zero hours employment contract. All of her shifts involve supporting people in their own homes for the local city council (in Scotland, if that's relevant). On average, she works around 37 hours per week (sometimes a lot more), and does additional "sleeping" shifts (paid at a set rate) when they are available (on average one or two of these per week) My fiancee has been with the agency full time for around 18 months. The agency routinely emails all employees every week to say "You have been booked for shifts this week, so please check the online system" or "All shifts have now been allocated" but recently the weekly email included the line "All shifts over 6 hours moving forward will include a 30 minute unpaid break in line with the Councils working time directive." No other information was provided, and we have emailed the agency twice for further information but no reply. There are several problems with this: Firstly, my fiancee supports people with various physical and learning disabilities who explicitly, as per their care plans, cannot be left alone in their homes (or indeed alone in the community) for safety reasons. She works one to one with the person she is supporting, and no other staff members are available to relieve her. Some of them may inadvertently hurt themselves, or are vulnerable to abuse, or suffer from potentially fatal epileptic seizures. It is impossible for my fiancee to take a "break" from her work in the legal sense, and if she left anyone on their own it would be a clear case of a breach of duty of care and serious negligence. It should be noted that none of the Council's own support worker employees are also unable to take a break, as there is nobody available to cover their duties while they leave the site. As for the issue of compliance with the Council's policy/Working Time Regulations, the majority of her shift patterns never complies with the legal guidelines. For example, she is often booked for a PM shift finishing at 22:00, then a sleep shift, rolling over onto an AM shift starting at 07:00 and sometimes working well into the early afternoon. This pattern can repeat several times in a 7 day period. In addition, it seems like her pay conditions have been changed without her being asked to sign an updated contract. Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated at this early stage. It sounds very wrong to me, given the circumstances of her work. Thanks a lot!

If they make a written request for one, again, i'm concerned the LL will simultaneously notify them of a significant increase in rent charges which they will not be able to afford due to a limited pension income. If this happens, what should/can they do?

My thoughts exactly, but I am concerned that if they report it immediately they will be unreasonably kicked out by the LL. We're at opposite ends of the country and both of their health is not fantastic.

I just called them to get some more info. which may be useful: AND this is the best bit. There is no tenancy agreement. They have not signed any contract with the landlord. When they hand over the cash, they don't receive any receipts. They have lived there for 2 years, and the landlord has just bumped the cash charge to £330/month. The previous tenants, a couple, had a formal, signed tenancy agreement and it transpires they were only paying £500/month in rental charges. At the end of that tenancy, all of their £500 deposit was kept by the landlord due to "damage".

Hi My parents are both in their mid-sixties and have retired. They are renting a property from some old acquaintance. I just discovered they are paying the landlord a total of £500/month rental charges, but agreed with the landlord to pay £200/month via standing order and have been withdrawing £300/month in cash and handing it over in person each month. The landlord told them he previously charged £600/month but would only charge £500 if they paid in this way. I am really concerned about this. Do you agree they should immediately and, without notice, start paying the total £500/month via standing order? Do they have a right to do this without fear of unfair eviction? I'm very worried the landlord will suddenly claim my parents are in arrears with their rent payments, and make a huge claim. How best to go about this please? Many thanks in advance for your help.

Well, I put the fact I was unhappy in writing to my management. I also stated the current situation (leaving the flat while s/u smokes) means the service user is unmonitored for a period of time, which puts the public at risk. My manager responded and said I was entitled to work elsewhere in a non-smoking environment. This is in Scotland not England, btw.

My manager verbally told me this after I voiced my concerns. The service user is actually in a transition, gradually moving out of a secure mental health ward (kept there under a compulsory treatment order) and into their own supported tenancy. They are gently being introduced into the community and their flat on a daily basis, and will soon have a few overnight stays in their own flat with 24 hour, 1:1 staffing. After these overnight trials have been successfully completed, they will then be formally discharged from the hospital and living in their own flat full time. We anticipate this will happen mid to late January, so there is plenty of time to sort this out. Would anyone recommend joining Unison in light of this?

Thanks for that. Very useful. I will quote this to my manager.

Absolutely no offence taken. "Service user" is the preferred nomenclature. The people we support are not employees, nor customers. They pay for an agreed amount of support "service" hours per week, hence the term "service user". Obviously they are not animals, but human beings and this goes without saying. This is a "forensic" case. Not everyone is supported because of additional needs, but because of risks posed to the public. There is a greater move towards this kind of service provision, and away from beds in secure wards in hospitals and prisons. I mentioned this as I thought it was relevant to my question. I have spoken to my manager, but they told me an hour was sufficient for the smoke to dissipate. I disagree. I agree with you Sangie595 in that a person with capacity cannot be instructed in their own home, but by the same token, can I as an employee refuse to work in such an environment?

Hi there I am a Support Worker employed by a city council. I support someone with a very mild learning difficulty, but they are totally independent. They are able to cook, clean, self-travel, etc. by themselves, and our team is present 24 hours a day to ensure the service user does not make unsafe decisions about relationships, or get in trouble with the police for anti-social behaviour. They live in reasonably small, modern 2 bedroom flat on the 4th floor. The single bedroom is designated as the staff sleepover room. The flat is owned by a housing association, which the city council then rents. Therefore, the service user is not directly the tenant. We do not have guardianship of the service user. My question: The service user is a smoker of around 110 to 20 cigarettes/day. They choose to smoke inside their bedroom - sometimes with an open window but often fully closed up, particularly at this time of the year. If they are smoking in their bedroom, the smoke can be smelled by staff in the sleepover room - even with an open window. We have been told we have the right to leave their flat for 1 hour if the service user starts smoking. Upon re-entering after 1 hour, the smell of smoke is still noticeable. I understand 2nd hand/passive smoking is dangerous as its unfiltered, can linger in the air for many hours and the dangerous stuff is invisible. As I am working 12+ hour shifts each day in this environment, what rights do I have as a non-smoker? Should I join a union? Many thanks

So just to update - the Border Patrol detectives telephoned me and we had a quick chat. They asked if I knew what was inside the package. I told them why I wanted it, and confirmed my goods were not controlled in any way. They were very polite and friendly, and said they had no further concerns. Within a few days I received my goods via Parcelforce.

Again, thanks Bazza. I will take these questions on board now, and later when I apply for a licence. I certainly do want to receive my goods as I have paid for them!