I shipped a $300 package last month to a customer via UPS.
Customer claims to not have received it.
UPS tracking says delivered on doorstep with a photo.
I’ve opened a claim with UPS and it says under investigation. Tracking now says “open investigation.”
Customer is saying she’s going to sue me and file a chargeback unless I refund her. I responded that I am waiting until UPS has completed their claim to get the insurance to refund her.
She says that she cannot wait and will just have to sue me since she thinks I’m negligent in this case.
I have copy of shipping label and screenshots of full tracking. I even take photos of the packages before I ship.
Can she actually sue me? Nothing online says she can but I’m a bit confused. What can I do in this situation to protect myself from this happening again aside from shipping insurance?
I’ve been doing ecommerce as a small family business for almost 25 years now, our AOV is around US$300, and in all that time, I’ve had plenty of customers threaten to sue because of one reason or another, but no one has come close to actually suing. It’s all talk.
Has anyone been successful in a chargeback because of a missing package?
I’m trying to figure out if someone can make a case against the seller even if the package shows as being delivered.
It’s very difficult to win chargebacks. And at the end of the day, there is a not so small possibility that the package was stolen after it was left at the door, as I understand is pretty common in the US. And it is the responsibility of the seller to ensure that the buyer gets their package. So if possible and if it doesn’t cost that much, try to get the signed package option, although even that isn’t a sure thing against chargebacks.
With chargebacks, it’s very difficult to win against a buyer. I’ve had cases where I’ve sold a big 700 dollar product, shipped from Korea to Germany, and the customer claims that I shipped the wrong product and started a chargeback. So I asked him to ship it back, knowing that I had already lost the shipping fee in shipping it to him, but at least comforted by the fact that he would have to spend money in shipping it back to me. Well, it turns out that he shipped me back some garbage, some old books. I went to PayPal and they told me that they could reimburse me if I could get a police report, which was not that easy to do, since there was no physical evidence that I could show the police to prove what happened, but I was able to convince a detective to just get me a report. After I sent it to PayPal, I did end up getting reimbursed, but they told me that they had to pay back the buyer anyway and reimbursed me on their dime, which I thought was pretty cool.