Royal Mail wouldn't refund full value - can I sue?

[buzby]

You got caught! What the seller was doing was fraudulant, effectively swindling eBay out of their final value fees. You were complicit in knowing he was doing this and inflating the value of the postage to cover the cost of the goods.

 

Irrespective of whether the goods he eventually supplied were not as described (2Gb instead of the expected 4Gb), your bill of sale was also a 'false instrument' as when the goods arrived in the UK, you did not pay HMC&E the correct import duties and VAT, this in itself is a criminal act and leaves you open to an action to defraud. THe goods probably had no import duty charged on the incorrect value either, possibly due to a mis-decription by the sender. It doesn't matter that the items were eventually returned, but at least you could mitigate any charges by saying they were returned.

 

Now to Royal Mail, why to you expect them to support your sellers improper practices simply because you expect everyone to take notice that the cost was REALLY hidden in the postage fees? Sorry, RM is right, and if you take any action against them, you might even find yourself defending a criminal action for false importation and fraud.

 

I'd chalk it up to experience and keep your head down. Don;t trade in this way, the only people who benefit are the [problematic].

[buzby]

No - it don't think you were in this to defraud, you were taking a risk - which yoiu clearly accepted - but the flipside is the 'true' value is not what you paid for it, but the value you can prove to others.

 

Your purchase, and the way in which it was transacted put you on shaky ground, therefore when one part of the chain goes sour (the return of the goods) your requirement to prove the value to RM depends on the proof you supply. They do not compensate for postage, they never have - onlyt the cost of the goods. You'll also find you'll not get the cost of the postage you paid to send the parcel back, ONLY the price of the goods that were contained therein.

 

As I mentioned, because of your expouire to all sorts of additional horrors, I wouldn't make an issue of it with Royal Mail. They DO accept eBay print-outs as satisfactory evidence of the auction cost which is OK for most of us, but when sellers load the postage to effectively pay for the goods, they buyer always loses out.

[buzby]

It's not as easy as you might think. My last eBay purchase of a Memory Card shown the item located in 'Ilford, Essex'. When I checked his feedback I discovered he was based and shipped from China. I provided eBay with a list of 8 of his auctions, expecting him to be barred. They remioved the 8 I reported, lefy 20 similar auctions, and he carries on trading. Not only do you need to be careful, you need to be clirvoyant too! Sorry you got stung, BTW.

[buzby]

Personally, I'd have thought the mere fact that the poster paid for £500 insurance rather than some lower amount is evidence that the value was greater than 99 pence each. After all, the poster did not know one of the parcels was going to be lost in the post.

 

What you overlook is the fact many people insure half-bricks in the mail, and base this and a false invoice on claiming their 'rightful' replacement cost. But all this is a side show to the main event, you were still happy to let the seller defraud eBay from their fees because 'everyone else did it'. It is still contrary to eBay's T&Cs.

 

As to the RM settlement, they'll pay what the invoice says the goods are worth, not what it cost you in 'carriage' to receive them OR send them back. Your original post wanted to know if you could raise an action to get them to pay you. The answer remains the same, of course you can - but the chances of a judge supporting such a practice would be highly unusual.

[buzby]

This is wrong, the value of postage and packing is included when assessing import duty and VAT, so there was no criminal act.

 

A few things to note - when an item is underdeclared in value, it misses out on the calculation of VAT and import duty and is delivered without penalty. However, in the REAL world, the cost of shipments are unknown to the C&E as the bulk of shipments are on a contract basis and not priced individually, usually invoiced to the sender in arrears - so the carriage cost seldom is an issue. IF there are stamps shown, then they can calculate, but most don't bother, sticking to the £18 personal import limit.

 

Moving on. You've never actually explained how much tax and duty you actually paid for recieving this batch of MP3 players? If you were 'lucky' in not being called to pay the dues, there is an expectation that on receipt you would, as a matter of honesty, contact C&E and ask for the assessment to tax etc could be paid. You didn't do this, so effectively you had smuggled goods and did nothing to mitigate the oversight. You did send them back again, but not having the goods still does not excuse the original act.

[buzby]

It wasn't really up to me... Ebay members in their thousands (probably tens if not hundreds of thousands) have complained to Ebay about it, to try to get them to ban sellers who do it. They did nothing about it, and that's why almost all of the Chinese sellers inflate P&P charges.

 

eBsy is a venue. Thry rely on members complaints to remove items that break the rules. Saying they did nothing is clearly wrong. The problem here is the same type of listings re-appear very quickly and I found over 30 from one seller (in China, and misrepresenting is location as the UK) so it still goes on.

 

Ebay has nothing to do with it! It's the Royal Mail who refused to refund me the value of the goods. The VALUE of the goods is the MARKET value. I proved beyond all doubt that they were worth at least £40 each, yet the Royal Mail didn't refund me this amount.

 

eBay is the outfit providing the proof of the value of your purchase, so are vwet much having something to do with it - unless of course you get your fraudulent seller to oblige?

 

A 250g item doesn't cost £40 to send from Hong Kong, and ten of them certainly don't cost £400 to send!

 

Really? A courier service from HK for a spare part for some important piece of machinery could cost double that for next-day delivery (and is common for mission-critical repairs) so I fail to see why you think such expense is 'obvious' as a cost contribution.

 

Why? Has anybody ever tried it?

 

Yes, and I lost. My item was stolen, the postwoman identified and dismissed but no civil remedy was possible as their Act of Parliament gave them immunity.

[buzby]

I was foolishly honest - I thought the Royal Mail would understand plain English and refund me the MARKET VALUE I paid for the items.

 

And you somehow prove this with a fraudulent Invoice, and expect them to fall in line with your scheme? Dream on!

 

Insurance operates of full disclosure and trust, from what I can see your loss and RMs reasonable response are the cause and effect of an action that was not honourable, therefore you are not entitled to claim in the way you want, and whether you knew what you were doing was wrong or not, it is no defence. Next time you are in a similar situation, think twice about doing it in this way. And as for your indignation about how I did or didn't know whether you paid tax on the consignment, I'm sure you would have mentioned it as part of the injustice received but you didn't, so it is a fair assumption.

 

There is little for me to add, except if you attempt to take RM to court, this may open a can of worms best left shut. I spent three days in court with them before, and they try every trick in the book. Rest assured, your actions would not go unnoticed, even though they ostensibly had no bearing on the main event.