I think the Distance selling would only really cover me with regard to the seller, not the courier. Might be wrong though ... it has been known : )

Thanks very much for that. I really appreciate you taking the time : )

Hi again. It was ebay on 25th oct 2015

Thanks very much for the responses. I'm very grateful. My main issue is that the item was obviously never theirs. They were paid to safely, professionally & competently deliver the item from A to B; a service they claim they are in business to do. (although my personal experience with Hermes is that that fail to do any of this more often than not) The fact that they took it upon themselves to discard my item because they broke it was never theirs to make. I have been through SCC before for something else so understand to some degree how it works. I'm more than prepared to do it and your advice in particualr, BankFodder, is what I was looking for. Thanks again for all of your input. I'll keep you posted.

I bought something from ebay at a very good price; one not easily repeated. The seller shipped it to me via Hermes. The tracking showed it as being with my local courier & out for delivery last thursday. It never arrived. I checked the tracking and everything was the same except the date had changed to friday. Still nothing (I was in all day) This happened for saturday & then monday; the date for delivery kept changing but still no actual delivery. Sometime on monday (yesterday) the tracking stopped working with a message that the tracking had been cancelled. I contacted Hermes via their online 'chat' and was told that they had damaged my delivery & had thrown it away but had given the sender a refund. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this is outrageous. It's bad enough, as a company offering the shipping of goods, that they are so negligent as to allegedly ruin shipments but to then allegedly discard the item too is so far outside their duty it's beyond belief. I say 'allegedly' above because for all I know someone has taken a shine to my item and simply reported it as 'damaged & discarded'. Where do I stand being the recipient. I didn't pay for the shipping or choose Hermes but I want what was sent to me so I can decide whether it's of any use or not. Any help or advice gratefully received