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Comment by 4oh9do | Hacker News Reader

At least they receive their packages back.

Compare that to the eBay Global Shipping Program - where if eBay decides that your package violates some opaque rule, neither the sender nor the recipient receives the package. eBay keeps it.

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Surely.........they reimburse both sides for it? Otherwise that's just theft or at the absolute minimum fraud. Ebay is absolutely free to reject any packages for any reason whatsoever, but they should always return them.

Even with reimbursement, it is still theft. It's like if I buy a bike from you, and the delivery truck driver decides to keep the bike for themselves and instead gives me cash and drives off, with me having no say in this.

Well.........kinda, but he's not stealing from you, he's stealing from the delivery company at that point. The delivery company accepts responsibility for the parcel when they collect it, and the contract usually says that either they will deliver the parcel or pay you back X where X is agreed beforehand. So if either of those two things happen they successfully complete their part of the contract. If the driver takes your parcel then it's up to the delivery company to prosecute, not you.

Certainly he's stealing opportunity from you.

Maybe you really needed the bike on the agreed-upon date.

If you need compensation for loss of opportunity and loss of profit and such, then there are companies which will happily accept liability for such for a sufficient financial incentive. Regular consumer-grade postage services very specifically exclude liability for anything outside of the delivery itself.

Or the bike was a rare or otherwise irreplaceable item.

You still own the bike, he is stealing from you. You could argue that depending on the circumstances the sell still owns the bike and is the one who has his bike stolen. But at no point does the delivery company own the bike or has the right to sell it

That's not true. The second you accept compensation for the item posted the delivery company takes ownership of the goods and they are free to do with them whatever they see fit, including selling them if they are ever found.

The terms linked in my sibling comment expressly say otherwise. The title remains with the seller until they either deliver it or decide to dispose of it. Which is hilarious.

Transfer of Title. Title to a GSP Item remains with your Seller until such time as the GSP Item is successfully delivered to you or your consignee, at which time title to the GSP Item shall transfer to you or your consignee. At no time do eBay (or its affiliates), Pitney Bowes (or its affiliates), or the third party logistics providers, shipping carriers, customs brokers, freight forwarders, or other subcontractors under contract with Pitney Bowes take title to a GSP Item.

It really depends on the terms of the contracts involved. Section 11 says that they get the title of the item if they determine it is undeliverable "for whatever reason":

https://pages.ebay.com/shipping/globalshipping/buyer-tnc.htm...

Basically their interest in people continuing to use the service is the only reason they have to perform, the contract says something to the effect of: ha ha we can do nothing if we want.

Yep both parties get reimbursed and sellers get protection from negative feedback resulting from it. Funny enough Pitney Bowes (the ones actually running GSP) just action off these items.

> but they should always return them

Unless you’ve agreed to allow eBay to dispose of “unacceptable” parcels at eBay’s discretion.

> Surely.........they reimburse both sides for it?

That sort of sounds like selling something to eBay with extra steps. (Although obviously they should just return it, although they will probably charge return shipping.)

Ugh, eBay. Still hasn't solved ~10 % of buyers blatantly abusing "buyer protection" to get stuff for free.

I don't know the current state of GSP but a few years back it seemed like it was just a scam betting on customs not inspecting ~99 % of packages. GSP claimed to collect duties and import taxes (calculated... how exactly? It's not like an American seller is providing a TARIC code to eBay). Anyway, if the package eventually arrived, you'd notice that there was zero documentation attached apart from the usual sticker saying that customs didn't randomly pick this package to check. Some people reported that when customs randomly picked their fees-supposedly-paid-through-GSP-package, they had to pay duties and taxes a second time.

> Ugh, eBay. Still hasn't solved ~10 % of buyers blatantly abusing "buyer protection" to get stuff for free.

Yes they have. They’ve decided that transferring the expense of protecting their own reputation to their sellers is a winning business practice.

Are they incorrect?

It’s a market reality, they can employ what I consider to be abusive practices like this because enough merchants accept it as a cost of doing business. But I wouldn’t call it “incorrect” exactly. If a merchant wants to submit to that, it’s a free country (thus far).

Sounds.. strange. Why would ebay keep the package? What would they do with it? Sounds more likely that it's thrown away somewhere.

eBay may keep it, destroy it, or do whatever with it, who knows? The key point is that neither seller nor buyer receive it.

Had this happen multiple times with nicotine patches, which you are allowed to import into Canada.

Eventually gave up and bought from Amazon.com (was cheaper than .ca).

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