I enjoy selling on eBay, and 99.9% of the time everything goes smooth. But I sold
this snow globe and it arrived broken. My customer sent me pictures right away
showing the box was soaked and the contents were all broken. So I had to
file an online claim with the USPS. And I wanted to walk you through that and show
you how to do that. It's really not that bad.
You do first need an account with USPS. So go to USPS.com and sign up for one.
It's free. Then under, "Help", go to "File a Claim", or you can go under, "Mail and Ship",
and go to, "Claims and Refunds". But it's just more straightforward to go to, "Help",
and file a claim. So I'll click on that. And it takes you to the "File a Claim"
page, where you can do domestic shipment claims and international. This is
domestic, so I'll go on down the page and it says. "What do you need to file a claim?"
A tracking number or label number. You can get that from your eBay sales page.
You'll have to show proof of value. And in this case for an eBay item, you have
to show proof of what the item sold for and then that the transaction went
through in this case on PayPal. That you did get paid. You also need to show
evidence of insurance purchased. And for an eBay item that just comes from the
online record that is generated when you make the sale and it's paid for and you
ship it and you get a tracking number. You need proof of damage. More than
likely your customer will still have the broken item in their possession. So
they'll have to take pictures and send them to you. My customer did that right
away which is very nice because you really need that for your claim. It's
also important to know when you can file a claim. If something's broken, like mine
was, you can file immediately. But if it's just lost and hasn't shown up, you have
to wait at least 15 days for most classes of mail. This was sent by
Priority Mail and it was broken upon arrival, so I could file immediately.
Which I did so I could get my money back as soon as possible. And you just go down
to the bottom of the page and click on, "Start an online claim". The first thing
they want is the tracking number which you can easily get from your eBay sales
record. Go to your Sellers Hub, and under "Orders", you can scroll down
to the item and you can get the tracking number from there. Click it, and you can
copy and paste it. Close that window, and then go back and paste the tracking
number in and also put the shipping date in. And then just click on "Search". Next
they'll want a reason for the claim. It can be whether it's lost contents,
damaged, contents missing, document reconstruction. Of course in this case, it
was contents damaged. Then you want to put in whether there were extra
insurance fees paid. This was sent by a Priority Mail. At the time of this video,
you get $50 insurance automatically with Priority Mail if you mail it directly
with the post office. With me for eBay, I get $100 automatically. So I just put
zero in here. I didn't pay anything extra for the insurance that was on this
package. And then I selected that I was the mailer. My address was already in
there because I had an account with USPS. So I just need to put in the name and
address and information for my customer. And a good way to make that easy is just
to go back to the Seller Hub, go down to the listing, and click on "View Record".
This is where you'll find all the customer's information that you'll need.
Their name, address, email address and other information about the sale that
you'll need to complete the claim. And then if you do it in kind of a split
screen, you can just look at that and fill in that information as you go. It
also wants you to give an item name. The item type, and what category. Mine fit into
"Collectibles", so I selected that. Need to put in a short item description. I just made it
very simple. A gold balmoral Santa musical snow globe. Then you go down and
it wants the purchase date. Which isn't necessarily the ship date. In this case,
it was the day before. And if the package never arrives, the amount requested can
include the item value plus the postage, you get it all back. But if it's
delivered, they say they've done their part, and all you'll get back
is the actual item value, not the postage. Which is kind of bad, but that's the way
it works. Then they ask you to upload proof of value. What works well here are
screenshots of your eBay sales record as well as screenshots of your PayPal
transaction for this item. The eBay sales record shows what the item sold for. It also
shows that you printed a label and a tracking number was generated. And the
PayPal transaction shows that you did get money for that item from the
customer. It took me three screenshots for each page to get it all. That
generated six files for me to save for that item. So I had to select those six
files and upload them for the proof of value. And then it wanted me to upload
proof of damage. And all I had to do there was upload the pictures of the box
and the broken item that the customer had sent me. So I went to the folder that
I created for this insurance claim, selected the pictures and uploaded them.
And then it wanted me to create a nickname for this claim. And I could have
chosen anything. I just put "Snow Globe", and then clicked on, "Review Claim". Then that
jumped to the page where it says, "Review and Submit Your Claim". I certified that I
provided all the accurate information, and clicked on "Submit Claim". Then it goes
to a page where you can click on "Claim History". And it shows my Snow Globe claim,
and that it's under review. And it almost immediately sent me a confirmation email
and a confirmation text showing that my claim was received. And then I got a
check seven days after I filed this claim! The check was cut five days after
I submitted the claim, and then two days later I actually received the check.
I thought that was really pretty quick. The whole process really wasn't that bad, and
before I even started my claim, I refunded my customer all of their money.
Because I believe that's just good customer service.
Put your customer first! And if you're not already a subscriber to my channel,
I'd appreciate it if you'd become one! Thanks for watching, and goodbye!