Ebay help please!

[goddessofpeep]

My husband ordered something for me from ebay as a surprise birthday present, and apparently there have been problems. He didn't tell me about it until just last night, and I've spent the morning trying to track down a missing package that is hard to track, and hasn't been updated since the 7th.  It's an international package that apparently made it across the world and through customs to get sent to the wrong local post office, and then eaten by a post office that really doesn't care(I was there today, and hope never to return!).

Anyway, I'm helping him try to sort this out since he never does ebay stuff, and I seem to have bumped into a change to an ebay policy that I'd like confirmation on.

We're still trying to find the package, but if the worst happens, how long does he have to open a not received claim?  It used to be 45 days or 60 days after you paid, but I went to the site to check, and now it says 30 days after the latest arrival estimate.  For anyone who's opened a claim recently, is there any place where it tells you the last day you can open a claim so you can be sure? Is the 30 day after last shipping estimate correct?  Its latest shipping estimate is July 19th.   I want to give this package every chance to arrive, but I also don't want my husband to lose  however much he spent on the present.

Thanks!

[LadyMoondancer]

He has six months to open a claim. 

Do you live in the UK, and was the package from the US?  Here's my experience: recently First Class International US-to-other-country packages have only shown tracking until they leave the US.  After that the tracking goes "dead".  However, I have never actually had one go lost;  they all show up eventually.  One of them took over a month to arrive in the UK.  Another took less than a week to arrive in Australia.  And yet another took three weeks to arrive in Australia.  So it doesn't necessarily factor into how much time it takes the package to arrive, that's just luck of the draw.

If the package was sent by First Class International please be patient; it's not really fair to the seller to start a claim so soon, after choosing the slower shipping option.

Edit:  The six months is Paypal's window of time, not eBay's.  Not sure what eBay's is.  But it doesn't really make a difference since he can file a claim through Paypal regardless.  Just as long as he didn't send the payment as a gift.

[goddessofpeep]

Thanks for the reply!  I just wanted to check to see what the new time frame for opening a claim was because I do not want to open one up right now.  I have been buying on ebay for about 20 years, and I am a *very* patient buyer. They just keep changing the rules, and I wanted to make sure I knew what the current policy is.  I want to wait until the very *last* possible second to open a claim.  I do want to give this package *every* chance to get here, but I also don't want my husband to out a fairly significant amount of money.  And I don't believe it was sent a cheap method.  There is at least some tracking number on it, and I'm fairly certain he paid for insurance.  I just wanted to make sure I knew the worst case time frame so my husband would stop freaking out.

No, I'm in the USA, and it was sent from Australia.  It actually should've been here over a week ago according the the tracking information I have, but it got sent from the correct sorting center to the wrong local post office.  It should have been sent to local post office Alpha to be delivered, but instead it got sent to local post office Beta, which is only a mile away from post office Alpha.  Post office Beta shipped it back to the sorting center, and the package completely disappeared before it got there.  As in it never got to the sorting office, and I spent the day actually going to post office Alpha and Beta, and calling the postal service on the phone to see if someone could do a trace for me.  It survived the trip across the ocean and getting through customs, only to be derailed a couple miles from my house:/  I went to post office Beta, and I can see why it disappeared there.  They did not care one bit. 

This is an ongoing problem with this area.  Things get bounced around all the time.  All.The.Time.  Usually they show up back in the system pretty quickly, even if they sometimes get bounced between post offices for a few weeks until they get here.  I recently got a package stamped "missent to Canada" - it was from a USA address, to a USA address.  I've had packages sent to the wrong state and the wrong country.  A friend of mine sent me a package that ended up on a tropical vacation to Puerto Rico for a week.  It happens ALL THE TIME here, particularly in the summer.  This time it's different - it should have shown up on the system by now.  I've spent the day trying everything to find it, and nobody seems to know where it went.  But I'll keep waiting, hoping it'll show up. 

[Sebby6]

Instead of waiting to claim with paypal, why not contact the seller and get them to put a tracer on the parcel? I believe only the sender can do that

[klmccass]

So sorry you lost your package! I hope it finds its way to you soon. I've had problems with international packages coming waaaaaay later than they're supposed to do hopefully it will work out!

[goddessofpeep]

Thanks for your suggestion:)  We have already contacted the seller. Everyone is doing everything possible to find that package. We've got the seller on it, and I spent the day yesterday running around to various post offices, and on the phone with different postal agencies over here.  I spoke to the supervisor at the post office it got sent to. I went to the local distributor and had them search the entire place for it. I spent the day on the phone trying to get information. I went to the website to open a search.  There is literally nothing left to do but wait.   I didn't put all the information about what I was doing to find the package because I didn't want to post a wall of text that nobody will read.

I really don't want people to think that I open claims with every little delay. I really, really don't.  Opening a claim is not my go-to response to package delays.   I just wanted to confirm the dates with someone who's dealt with this recently to make my husband stop freaking out about this. I don't want to open a claim for this, or ANY package. In 20 years on ebay, I've only ever opened one claim for a lost package, and I did that on the very last day possible. Literally - I waited until the evening of the last day.  And up until that time, I had been in contact with the seller to try to see if we could find that package.

All I need is to confirm when the last day to open a claim is because it seems that ebay has changed their policies recently. It used to be 45 days from payment. Then I think it went up to 60 days. Now when I check the site it says 30 days from the later arrival estimate. That is probably correct, but I had not heard of this change because I don't open claims, and it has been several years since I needed this information.  I haven't seen anyone on this site mention it, so I just wanted to see if anyone who is up on this kind of thing, or who has had to open a claim recently, can confirm this.   I wouldn't have even posted, but I was trying to give my husband information about this, and I saw the new policy when I went to check my facts on ebay's site.  He's freaking out a bit, and I just wanted make 100% sure I was giving him the correct information.

Thanks to everyone for their advice and well wishes. Now it's time to wait.

[LadyMoondancer]

I completely understand wanting some reassurance!   I hope your pony arrives soon.  It's awesome that your hubby went pony hunting for you, BTW. 

[goddessofpeep]

Great news! The best news ever! The package showed up unexpectedly today!  It was really weird too.  The mail *never* comes this early, but today it did.  I'm thinking that the package was at post office Beta, and had been sitting around for almost two weeks.  They didn't want to admit it to me when I was there(or they actually bothered to look AFTER I left). Probably since someone showed up to try and find it, they finally did the right thing and got it moving again.  That's just a guess, but I dealt with a lot of bad "whaddaya want us to do? Call this number and stop bothering us" attitude yesterday at that post office.  This isn't the first time I've had a missing package suddenly show up the day after I asked about it.

I'm glad that post office Alpha is my where my mail gets sent out from(most of the time).  They actually seemed to care, and they tried to find it for me.

Thanks to everyone who replied:)