The laptop I sold on eBay and sent via Evri arrived dented and I refunded the buyer £40: Can I claim for damage?

In March I sold my MacBook Pro laptop on eBay for £316.96, plus £4.06 postage which I paid for and organised via eBay.

I sent the package with Evri, using bubble wrap and honeycomb paper to cushion it and make sure it couldn’t slide around inside the box. I even wrote ‘fragile’ on the outside of the box in multiple places.

But when it arrived with the buyer, they told me the laptop was badly dented in two corners, as if someone had dropped it. The delivery box was also broken on the corner.

I suspect it was potentially dropped by the courier.

To keep the buyer happy, I offered to pay them £40 immediately, which they accepted.

I tried to claim this amount from Evri so I wasn’t out of pocket. But it has been extremely unhelpful and now it ignores my emails completely. N.T.

Our reader sent a laptop - but the buyer was unhappy with dents on two of the corners

Lucy Evans of This is Money replies: You were delighted to have found a buyer for your MacBook Pro and trusted Evri to deliver your parcel carefully.

But your heart sank when you received a message from the buyer raising some issues.

He pointed out there were a couple of scratches on the laptop, and the case didn’t fit the model. But he was willing to overlook those.

What he wasn’t willing to let go, however, were the noticeable dents in two corners of the laptop.

He was confused as these didn’t appear on photos you attached to the listing on eBay, so asked for a partial refund to reflect the damaged condition.

Not wanting a dispute, you said you were disappointed with the delivery and immediately offered a £40 refund to resolve the issue amicably.

You submitted a claim form to Evri, but the 28 days the courier says you need to wait for a response came and went.

When you chased Evri, it told you that it was eBay’s responsibility to sort the issue, as it was the retailer.

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the retailer is the one responsible for the parcel being safely delivered. In this case, that’s eBay - because you purchased the packing label from them directly. 

But it seems the two companies were playing pass the parcel with you. When you went to eBay it said you sent the laptop via ‘custom postage’, so it is instead the courier’s responsibility to compensate you.

So you emailed Evri again, but the customer service agents you spoke to didn’t seem to understand your situation or acknowledge what eBay had told you.

Eventually, your emails began to be ignored.

This doesn’t seem fair, so I spoke to eBay and Evri on your behalf. You suspect the parcel has been dropped by the Evri courier, but as the firm is keen to point out, this is speculative and you don’t know what happened.

It also added: ‘When a parcel is booked through a third-party retailer or platform, the delivery details are held by that company, so customers should contact them directly in the first instance.

‘We know some items require extra protection in transit, so we encourage customers to follow our packaging guidelines to help ensure their parcels are properly protected.’

When I spoke with eBay, it explained that sellers can choose how they post items.

You decided to buy an Evri label via third-party provider Packlink, which was bought through eBay – a rather confusing system.

It tells me you should have made a claim for the damage via Packlink, but it’s understandable why you went directly to the courier and you should have instead been directed to the correct place by eBay.

Packlink has now agreed to reimburse your £40 as a goodwill gesture.

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