Buyer says delivery signature is fake and wants a refund.

[FuZZuk]

I sent an item recently using Royal Mail Special Delivery. It was tracked as being delivered with a signature a day or so later - completely as expected. So I thought the sale was completed. Two weeks later, the buyer opens an eBay dispute saying the item hasn’t arrived - and wants a refund. They say they have checked tracking and the signature on it is fake. Tracking says it was delivered to the address on the PayPal payment notification - which matches their address in eBay. PayPal have ring fenced the original payment - so there’s now a debt which effectively freezes my PayPal account if I don’t top it back up to zero. My question is... What do I do? Is the buyer attempting to scam me and where does PayPal stand on this? The eBay case prevents me from opening a PayPal case, but I‘m obviously not happy to refund at this time because tracking has the item delivered with a signature. The virus complicates things a little because since the 1st May, Royal Mail haven’t been handing over the handsets for signatures - they’ve been social distancing delivering. Presumably by knocking and taking the name of who answers and takes the package. I have opened a claim with Royal Mail, but have other sellers seen this? And what happened in your situation?

[tykonn]

I'm in the opposite situation.

Royal Mail has faked a delivery signature, claimed that the delivery was successful and the seller is refusing to make an effort to get a refund from Royal Mail, and is refusing a refund overall.

The seller thinks I'm lying about the situation.

This is not the first time Royal Mail in my area has delivered to the wrong address or just faked signatures and not bothered delivering.

At the moment Royal Mail has wasted 2 hours of my time not doing anything about it and putting me in a caller queue each time, the first person just abruptly hung up on me and didn't care.

[FuZZuk]

That's massively annoying... and I don't really know what to say that can help.

For me, it was eBay that sorted it - the package was delivered to the address and it was signed for.

I think they were hoping I had thrown away the postage receipt and were trying it on.

But what helped me is the exact thing that's given you trouble - proof of delivery is assumed to be correct.

But if someone is stealing items and faking the delivery then that's an impossible situation to resolve unless they get caught.

Keep going - it might be that Royal Mail investigate and see that there's other delivery issues that point to dishonesty from one of their employees.

😕