ParcelHero woes

General
1

Sold an item at Christmas. £110. £25 to post tracked and insured to Austria. Buyer paid me 10 to meet me halfway ish. All good. Posted 31st December.

Buyer contacted me yesterday to say it hasn’t arrived. I contact ParcelHero.

Their reply:
Dear Joe,

Please accept my sincere apology for your lost shipment.

It is with regret that I have to inform you that the 30 calendar day deadline for notifying us of the loss has been exceeded, which means that we are unable to process your claim for you on this occasion.

I completely understand this is not the outcome you had hoped for, and as a goodwill gesture, I would like to offer you a £15 credit which will be credited to your ParcelHero® account within 14 days. I hope this goes some way to making up for your negative experience.

Once again, I’d like to extend my sincere apologies to you and assure you that we take every claim very seriously.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have questions about our claims process, or if you need more information.

Yours sincerely
ParcelHero® Claims Department

———

My reply:

Not sure how I was supposed to notify you within 30 days when the buyer didn’t contact me. Surely it flagged up on your system as stuck. Why didn’t anyone do anything about it? Or contact me? I put my return address there on the package too. The label was laminated and stuck firmly in place.

I read here that you undertake searches for missing items:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.parcelhero.com/blog/expert-shipping-advice/find-lost-parcels/amp

Keep your voucher, I won’t be posting with you again. Find my package instead, the one I paid extra for to have it fully covered.

Do something, anything, not just a weak offer of a voucher knowing damn well that I’m unlikely to post with your company ever again. A 15 quid voucher, come on!

Joe

2

I just checked their terms and conditions and indeed ParcelHero says it is 30 days.

An email won’t do much in this case. Your best bet is make a big stink on their social media and warn people about how it’s stupid to use their service because if the buyer doesn’t mention a lost package within 30 days, you’re essentially screwed.

This really sucks. I guess going forward if you ever use their service again you’re going to have to warn the buyer that they must claim to have no received anything within 30 days =/

*Perhaps also file a chargeback if paid by CC*

3

Yeah, good call re: future sales. Doubt I’ll use their service again. I angrily wrote in my reply that there should be a system that flags missing items…but I suppose it’s not in their interests as a company to flag up claims for their customers.

I dunno, is it the buyer’s responsibility to keep checking on an item once it’s sold? Would you pay back your buyer in this circumstance? Regardless, I’m just venting.

4

I think it’s more like it’ll be much more costly to have them flag missing items, because there will be times where there’s system errors perhaps and if they message someone who shipped a package about the package being lost, when in reality it actually shipped, this would become problematic. Ultimately, I think the biggest issue is the 30 day claim rule, that’s just silly. That’s far too short for a parcel delivery and they should be ashamed of themselves for that. In comparison, Canada’s policies is 90 days domestically, and SIX MONTHS for international shipments. USPS is 60 to 12 MONTHS. Parcelhero should be embarrassed with this system.

I think it is a buyer’s responsibility to check, but at a certain extent. I mean as a buyer, you should give leeway to the seller for getting the item delivered on time, but if it’s passed a long while then the buyer should have notified the seller. 30 days creates a scenario that’s too short for the buyer to report to the seller in my opinion, since the buyer may just assume it took longer than usual to be in the post :slightly_frowning_face:

I am unsure of your circumstances because perhaps some details are missing and it can change the outcome entirely. Is there any tracking information available? Are you sure that the buyer did not scam you? Can he file charge back? Is Austria a reputable place (where buyers rarely scam the sellers)? Did you sell through messages, or ebay? If the seller can simply file a chargeback, then it’s best to just pay back the buyer yourself. If it’s through ebay, it made sense for the buyer to report the package not received at this time, because it may start being near the dispute time limit, which would be something I would do too. There’s too many variables at play, but I feel sympathy for you being dealt such a bad hand due to a crappy courrier’s service terms and conditions.