Curiouser and curiouser. That tale of the undelivered parcel

If you paid by Credit Card, contact them.

About a year back (+/-) I ordered something which didn’t arrive. I became ‘dubious’ when I couldn’t contact the seller. After some more checks, it appeared it was a scam and I was one of many.

Credit Card company refunded money without any fuss ( about £200).

Action Fraud contacted me after some time, a box ticking exercise. They are a waste of time. I made the point the way to stop this kind of fraud was for the Credit Card companies / banks to run checks on those who set up trader accounts. This seemed beyond the understanding of Action Fraud.

Some skill you have there being able to tell a religion from sight alone.

It's an intelligence gathering exercise only. As they say:

"When you report to us you will receive a police crime reference number. Reports taken are passed to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. Action Fraud does not investigate the cases and cannot advise you on the progress of a case."

The intelligence may or may not result in action - we don't get further updates.

That's not in the remit of Action Fraud.

Most of the scams come from abroad, and good luck enforcing that kind of policy with Bank of China or the like. If it's a real UK seller than Trading Standards may get involved. If you have a UK address it may be worth contacting Trading Standards local to where they are based.

Theo

Evri are a slippery company for vendors too.

I once sent my scanner/printer to a relative who had a lot of copying to do. The arrangement was that she would do her copying, put the printer in the packaging it came in and send it back.

I watched their tracking and it got to my recipient's local distribution hub, then there was an entry that delivery might be delayed After a few days, as vendor I contacted Evri and complained that the delay had been going on too long and could they please get it delivered ASAP. That gained me a reply that they couldn't deliver it because it had been damaged in transit. I then told them to deliver it anyway because then I would know how much it had been damaged, and perhaps get it repaired. They then said they couldn't do that because they couldn't find it.

So I asked for the cost of the contents of the parcel plus the cost of handing it to them as a delivery requirement, and they told me their refund policy was £20 for a loss. I looked up the cost of the cheapest similar all-in-one (the one I sent was no longer made), filled out a Small Claims form with what their incompetence had cost me to replace what they had lost (after all, I had expected to get my printer back, so it wasn't just the addressee's loss). I told them to pay within 14 days or I would send the document I had scanned for them to the court and pursue payment legally, and then they would have to pay the court fees as well. I got my cheque in the post in 10 days. Getting blood out of a stone would be easy in comparison.

Corollary: I did buy the printer I had charged them for, and I did send it Parcelforce that time. It arrived OK and was used, and I received it back from the same carrier. I don't think I would ever send anything via Evri again.

My experience shipping fragile packets (balsa wood kits) is that about one in thirty gets superficial damage and one in a hundred is smashed beyond repair with e.g. fork lift truck wheel marks on it...

Mostly the vendor sorts it out and claims on the courier.

Courier charges are very low really. Pay peanuts get monkeys

Top level packaging is very helpful.

I think that's the courier business model. They know 1-3% of packages will come to grief, and they know that if you're a business seller you'll just include that as a cost of doing business - it's cheaper than paying the courier more on every shipment to take better care.

Unfortunately it breaks down when you are sending a single irreplaceable item and you can't just pull another one out of inventory and ship a replacement. For that either you play the above lottery or if you're prepared to pay extra for more certainty there are higher cost services like Special Delivery.

Theo

I think that is true.

Many vendors - if not most - simply refund or replace because its cheaper than getting the goods back, repairing them and then on-selling them as 'refurbs'. One vendor delivered lager glasses when I ordered high ball glasses. They sent the highballs and said 'keep the lagers' - I gave them to a mate. Another tome I ordered 'hairpin' retainers and got split pins. Again the vendors sent the correct item and said 'keep the others'

...........

Unfortunately in my case the 'vendor' is no longer responding to emails. Evri have said 'its not their problem' Police don't give a f*ck. Shopify may or may not cancel the site. Come Monday I'll start a chargeback claim with Visa

In my days of buying regularly from Farnell, they had a threshold of £8 for wrongly sent parts, above which they would arrange return.

On one occasion a full height rack cabinet was dented in transit. The supplier sent a new one after reviewing photographs and told us to keep and dispose of the old one. We now have two racks in use, one slightly dented. John

Ok. I thought it might be worth reporting back on this.

To date, Oryzaon - who appear to be Hong Kong based - have made a couple or attempts to brush me off with 'we are loookig in to this' 'we have contacted Evri' etc etc

Well I, also, had contacted Evri and they had admitted liability for the loss but not to me but to Oryzom, and advised me to 'go back to them'

(I get the impression that Evri stealing parcels is not unknown and that they 'have resolved the local situation' means 'the driver has been sacked'.

So I printed out everything and toddled off to the only branch of Barclays that is still staffed, to make a chargeback claim. Where to my surprise, I got to talk to a reasonably intelligent young lady who registered my claim and said the following:

1. They will normally make a temporary repayment of the money to my account within days.

1. They may or may not request further information. If so she said to bring the letter in with my detailed email audit trail and she could get it back to where it needs to go FOC.

2. They (Visa? Barclays?) may or may not pursue the matter with the recipient bank account. "Often they think it is not worth the trouble and they just take the hit"

1. If at any later stage they think that my claim was not genuine, they reserve the right to debit my account for the sum involved.

All in all, it seems pretty fair, if somewhat 'can't be arsed to chase the crims' - but then the whole thing is pretty much 'we can't be arsed to chase the crims, only you if you ever say 'muslim' online again' .

Theft today seems to be socially acceptable under Labour. Whereas waving a Union Jack is not.

Sigh. Anyway that's the chargeback process. I strongly advise to do it in person rather than online or by phone, if you can. The security for online/phone is immense as the lady says 'I can see you are who you say you are, you have the card, you have other ID'.

I didn't bother to make an appointment. There was only one girl dealing with other than cashier issues so I had to wait about ten minutes.

If you have a momentary lapse of reason and gfirget toi throughly vet an online site, I hope this is helpful.

PS I took delivery of a Numatic 'Henry Quick Pro' cordless vacuum cleaner yesterday. How UK made it is I don't know.

But I was pleasantly surprised. I was using the little powered roller brush when it stalled on some carpet edge and stopped.

I thought I had burnt it out, but rebooting the machine restored its function. Overcurrent sensor? Clever.

I think its about 300W, on top rabbit, or about 150W on normal setting. It's enough for what I need to do. And unlike my big Henrys I can lift the bugger up stairs without need for an inhaler at the top.

Tentatively recommended.

From the wording on their website, I suspect the only model made in the UK is the classic red Henry?

All I see is a blanket statement on the website 'all products UK designed and made'

Certainly their professional products - carpet shampoos etc are UK made. My guess is that the pcbs battery and the motors are made in China but the rest is UK made.

Not sure but it is entirely possible the motors are *not* brushless. Certainly there are only two wires going down to the *roller* motors on the powered heads. And the main motor stops instantly like a brushed motor with a brake.

The website says it comes with two batteries. Mine had only one.