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I sold an item on a well known auction site in good faith and with stipulated conditions clear and visible to the buyer. It was delivered to the buyer only for me to receive, in breach of our contract of sale, a return request, some 3 days after receipt of the item, with a spurious, unvalidated explanation for the return given. At no point was any evidence provided to substantiate the return claim made. The claim that the auction return terms override any terms specifically laid out in the text of the listing seems unreasonable when the auction site have the technology available to prevent such terms appearing but refuse to deploy it. If I type a contact number into the text of the listing, their algorithms pick this up and prevent me listing the item until it is removed. The fact that the auction site refuse to deploy this with other key phrases such as ‘no returns’ might suggest that the company are happy to create misleading protection for sellers, whilst maximising the fee income collected by the company
The auction site eventually permitted a return against my will and terms of sale, as is customary with electrical items, and it became clear quite quickly that it had been shipped to the wrong address by the auction site. They held my address on file but decided to ship it to an address I lived in over 10 years ago, despite my updating my address on the site several times since. After a similar situation arose 2 years previously, the site refunded the money owed to me because of their error and omission. It subsequently became clear that they had no return shipping address for me and had not taken me through any process on the previous occasion to prevent a repeat. A system fault was also blamed for the fact that during the 13 year duration of my registration with the platform, this information had never been required. There was subsequently an acknowledgement that a flaw had given rise to the absence of a return address being registered on the account. When the agent directed me to the relevant section of the site it was clear that out of the 7 addresses held on file, none were the address that the item was returned to. In fact, the only place this address existed was on my initial registration page from 13 years ago.
After contacting them and appealing without success, and following Civil Procedure rules, I opened a small claims case and would appreciate some thoughts on my strategy and what I should do? I've already been contacted by their legal representation asking for my account details and they also informed me that they were under no obligation to provide me with any of the information i requested as the disclosure rules didn't apply. They have also applied and been granted an extension to the time limits.
Thanks in advance.
The auction site eventually permitted a return against my will and terms of sale, as is customary with electrical items, and it became clear quite quickly that it had been shipped to the wrong address by the auction site. They held my address on file but decided to ship it to an address I lived in over 10 years ago, despite my updating my address on the site several times since. After a similar situation arose 2 years previously, the site refunded the money owed to me because of their error and omission. It subsequently became clear that they had no return shipping address for me and had not taken me through any process on the previous occasion to prevent a repeat. A system fault was also blamed for the fact that during the 13 year duration of my registration with the platform, this information had never been required. There was subsequently an acknowledgement that a flaw had given rise to the absence of a return address being registered on the account. When the agent directed me to the relevant section of the site it was clear that out of the 7 addresses held on file, none were the address that the item was returned to. In fact, the only place this address existed was on my initial registration page from 13 years ago.
After contacting them and appealing without success, and following Civil Procedure rules, I opened a small claims case and would appreciate some thoughts on my strategy and what I should do? I've already been contacted by their legal representation asking for my account details and they also informed me that they were under no obligation to provide me with any of the information i requested as the disclosure rules didn't apply. They have also applied and been granted an extension to the time limits.
Thanks in advance.
