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Any advice please...
I'm on eBay France, which doesn't (as far as I can find out) offer the Global Shipping Program.
I had an eBay account in the UK for years, but only ever bought stuff, never sold anything. I've just set up an eBay/PayPal account in France, the first thing I've sold, and it's become a ball-ache right from the off.
Auctioned some shifters, and set the auction as limited to France and EU countries only, to try and avoid exactly what has now happened.
Winner is in Latvia (Riga). He paid, 25€ plus 15€ postage, all fine. I posted the item via La Poste (French national postal service), 15€, registered post, with tracking. I sent the buyer a photo of the item boxed up, before posting, to check I'd written the name/address correctly, he replied and confirmed it was correct.
Sent the package, didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks, I assumed post might be slow in Latvia, plus it was Christmas time. Checked with buyer, nothing arrived. Checked again a week later, still nothing. Buyer has been responsive and polite, has a long history on eBay (10+ years, 1000+ feedback, 100% positive the last 12 months), said he would wait a couple of weeks more, but if nothing turned up he'd ask for a refund.
Belatedly, I thought to check the item tracking via La Poste. Turns out it arrived in Latvia after 3 days, and then to the local hub depot after 6 days (29th Nov). After that it says it couldn't be delivered due to a problem with the address. The message (also on Nov 29th), says "the address is incomplete and we couldn't deliver your item. We're looking for more information to assure the delivery of your item. You can contact our client service to add more info if necessary."
On the French La Poste website, it states that once a package has been noted as being received by the national post of the country it has been sent to, then it is the responsibility of that country, and no longer the responsibility of La Poste, which I guess I guess means they won't refund anything.
I contacted La Poste through their online client service thingy, asking what I could do, and asked the buyer to check with the Latvian post service too. He replied that he checked, but that they had no info on the package. A few days later I got a letter in the post from La Poste saying that they had received my request, were looking into it, and would come back with any further info within 30 days (although contractually they reserve the right to take up to 90 days). I scanned and sent this letter to the buyer, and wrote a translation into English for him. He agreed to wait the 30 days before applying for a refund.
Those 30 days will be up on Feb 7th, and I'm not very hopeful of anyone finding anything tbh.
So far it's all been polite, the buyer has been reasonable, and there's no reason to suspect a scam.
But if the package is never located, and the buyer claims a refund, it means I've lost both the item and the postage fee.
What's the standard procedure in these circumstances?
Is there any way for both parties not to lose out here?