The Fox Report
Barry Fox’s technology column
Cures for online pain and frustration
O
nline purchasing can be
reference number and confirmed in
writing that the phoney Royal Mail
Tracking Data relied on by eBay ‘should
be considered a fraud by false representation as someone has represented
they are you to obtain these goods’.
So far so good. But when the police
tackled Royal Mail, using a dedicated direct crime-stopping contact
number (which incidentally Royal
Mail only answers on weekdays) the
police faced the same roadblock that
I as a member of the public had run
up against.
a painful experience. If
something goes wrong, raising a query all too often drops you
into unresponsive, unhelpful and
obstructive bot-based ‘Help and response’ systems. Last month, I gave
an example. This month, I bring
some hopeful news of a simple way
to bypass or over-fly obstructions.
Pass the parcel from eBay
As a brief reminder, I bought a £50
bit of electronic kit from an eBay
seller (flat price, no auction bidding)
which was (allegedly) sent to me by
Royal Mail Tracked Delivery. It never
arrived. The seller claimed ‘proof of
delivery’ in the form of Tracking Data
from Royal Mail. But the Data was
clearly phoney. There was no address
for actual delivery, no photo evidence
of delivery and the package had been
‘signed for’ with two different names
and scribbles – both fictional.
For reasons I have never understood
(perhaps due to over-dependence on a
bot) eBay accepted the demonstrably
fraudulent tracking data as solid proof
of delivery, rejected my claim, closed
the case and – when I complained
– told me (several times) to contact
Royal Mail and get Royal Mail to admit
failure to deliver.
‘Royal’ Mail
As a reminder, Royal Mail has since
2015 been a private company owned by
shareholders. Quite how it retains the
Royal seal is a mystery. Ofcom recently
opened an investigation into Royal
Mail’s compliance with its qualityof-service statement.
Royal Mail flatly refused to help
investigate the phoney ‘proof of delivery’, saying it would not ‘further
investigate…. due to the time that’s
passed’. In fact, only one week had
passed between notifying eBay of
goods missing and eBay rejecting
my claim and telling me that I ‘must
contact Royal Mail’; and only one day
10
had passed between eBay rejecting my
claim and my contacting Royal Mail.
A full week later Royal Mail was still
writing ‘if your item still hasn’t been
received’, thereby suggesting that the
package might just have been delayed
by Royal Mail’s rotten service.
Royal Mail showed no interest in
the signature fraud and said eBay had
‘misadvised’ in telling me to contact
Royal Mail because any queries on
tracking data must be made by eBay
and the seller. As eBay had already
closed the case, and the seller already
had my money, there was fat chance
of that.
Escalation
But after (and only after) I filed an
Escalated Customer Resolution complaint about Royal Mail’s customer
service, a Royal Mail employee grudgingly confirmed – after just short of a
month of my nagging – that ‘the GPS
attached to the scanning equipment…
does indicate that the item has been
misdelivered to an incorrect address.’
‘Due to Data Protection Regulations,
(Royal Mail is) unable to disclose the
address in question,’ wrote Royal
Mail, blaming the now universal legal
scapegoat.
In the meantime, I used the surprisingly easy-to-use online process for
filing a Police Crime Report. To cut
a longish story short, police officers
visited, spoke to me by phone, emailed
for further information, issued a crime
Still no help from Royal Mail
Royal Mail flatly refused to give the
police the address of actual delivery
unless the police filed a formal ‘RIPA’
(Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Act 2000) request. RIPA governs the
use of covert surveillance by public
bodies and in practice the police only
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Practical Electronics | September | 2023
invoke the time-consuming process for serious crimes or
thefts. The police could not understand why Royal Mail
was insisting on a RIPA and a fifty-quid bit of kit could
not justify the time and cost involved.
A helpful, and obviously frustrated, police sergeant, explained: ‘If we can move fast and knock on a door, missing
parcels have a way of suddenly appearing. But Royal Mail
have insisted that there is no way other than RIPA for the
police to get the address and investigate the fraud. And
it’s now taken so long that the evidence will have gone so
the power of arrest will have also gone.’
So, thanks a million Royal Mail for your part in the fight
against postal fraud by taking nearly a month to check your
GPS proof of fraud and then refusing to share it with the
police. Maybe, purely as a probably pointless personal
experiment, I will try pursuing Royal Mail through to the
Ombusdman. Maybe not. I’ll see how I feel.
eBay’s NoReply approach to communication
If communicating with Royal Mail over self-evident fraud
is frustrating, it can’t hold a candle to communicating
with eBay. Even the police found it frustrating. Once the
standard ‘where are my goods’ customer procedure has
been completed and shut down, eBay sends emails from
a NoReply address. The only way (that I could find) then
to challenge an eBay email is to wade through an ocean
of automated FAQ treacle and use a web form to initiate a
completely new enquiry. This is then dealt with by someone
fresh to the case. There is no provision (that I could find)
to attach photographs or documentary evidence.
It would be good if there were a way to complain to the
Ombudsman about eBay. And according to eBay there is.
The company directs disgruntled customers to the Financial
Services Ombudsman – see: https://bit.ly/pe-sep23-ebay
Not so, says the FOS, ‘We are a free service set up to
resolve disputes with financial businesses, like banks or
insurance companies… and it doesn’t appear your complaint is one we can help with.’
Since I had escalated my complaint to Royal Mail and
finally squeezed out written admission of delivery to a
wrong address, I was able to file that also as evidence.
Moral #2: if Royal Mail Customer Help is unhelpful, use
the escalation option.
So far, the money remains in my account and like a
plaintiff in court I can now only wait to see whether and
how eBay and the phoney-proof-parroting seller respond
to the shed load of evidence I sent the card company, and
what the credit card ‘jury’ decide on where my £50 should
finally come to rest.
Regardless of the outcome, I already know one thing
for sure. I shall think very carefully indeed before I ever
again buy anything costing more than a few quid through
eBay, or buy anything from anyone who wants to send it
by Royal Mail Tracked Delivery.
…and finally
Last, here’s one other practical tip. All today’s complaints
and claim services will usually have a tight limit on the
number of text characters that can be submitted as a description of the complaint. If they allow photo or documentary
evidence to be filed there will usually be restrictions on the
file format and size accepted. This may well not be clearly
stated in advance. So ahead of starting on the claim or
complaint trail, draft a tight statement of fact with all the
most relevant dates and events clearly set out. Also, collect
and collate all the evidence, ideally as widely accepted
jpeg and pdf files. It will then be (relatively) easy to trim
the word length and re-size files to comply with whatever
online strictures pop up. As any writer knows, editing down
facts is always easier than adding and expanding them.
Chargeback
Fortunately, there is still one near-magic way to bypass
eBay’s obstructions. It’s called Chargeback and it’s a service
offered by the credit card companies.
Essentially, if you have paid for goods or services with
your credit card and something has gone wrong, you can
use the credit card company’s online system to claim
back the payment made from the card. If the credit card
company agrees that you have been done down, it will
claw back the cash.
Chargeback will usually, initially, be only temporary,
though. If the other side contests the claim, the credit card
company will ask for more evidence and evaluate it. But
this evidence can be sent by email, with evidence attached.
The big glory of the Chargeback process is that there is
no longer any need for the customer to try and deal directly
with eBay and its deliberately evasive NoReply mail system.
In my case, my card company temporarily clawed back
my money from eBay. The eBay seller then responded by
simply parroting his original reliance on the Royal Mail
Tracking Data that I had repeatedly shown to be phoney.
Because I had filed a crime report I was able to show
evidence quoting the police crime reference number and
police letter deeming the signatures to be fraudulent. Moral:
if you have been burned online, file a crime report, if only
for the Crime Reference number.
Practical Electronics | September | 2023
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