Dishonest trader

After I posted this, the buyer contacted me and returned the refund, so luckily, all is well now. eBay couldn’t actually do anything. I talked with them yesterday regarding a different but similar situation where I had refunded a buyer and they were honest and contacted me to let me know the shipment had arrived. eBay informed me that they don’t have a contract with buyers that allows them to take funds from a buyer, so eBay advised me to get a refund through PayPal. That’s what made me think to check the delivery on the MSX game that I had refunded a couple of months prior.

Calling police in a foreign country MAY get the buyer in trouble, it’s hard to say, but I highly doubt that it would end up getting me the money back.

Luckily it’s all good now. My advise to anyone shipping a game internationally, please use FedEx or DHL! I do online sales for a living and I can say from experience that the loss rate for international post shipments is really high. Probably higher than 5%. I’ve never lost a package via FedEx or DHL. Typically I will only use FedEx or DHL if the item is worth more than $100. I made an exception since it was a video game rather than the professional equipment I normally sell, but I won’t again. The risk is too high.

I can package an item extra carefully to protect against roughness. There’s nothing I can do in packing to protect it from being lost though. It doesn’t matter how good the post office is in the destination or origination country either, it’s a matter of getting passed through multiple counties on the way there. It’s way too common for packages to end up in the wrong country.

Now that I think about it, DHL does offer many different services with different qualities of service. DHL Express is the international shipment method I’m talking about, which is super duper fast and can get a package from Japan to my door in the eastern US in 24 hours. I’ve also noticed that in some regions, DHL offers cheaper services that are more akin to postal shipments and do pass through multiple agencies on the way to the customer. These would have a loss rate similar to postal shipments and be just as slow, often taking months to deliver an international package.

I had a similar issue with a US buyer once. Unfortunately he just kept the MSX and did not pay for it, and eBay was very much unhelpful (this was during peak of COVID when shipping times were very unpredictable).