Whiskeytownracer
Old School Hero
This might be of help to someone so thought I'd post my minor tale of woe so that others don't fall foul of this. Of course, I'm sure you guys are all too sensible for it to apply 
I recently sold an item here, value £200, sent via RMSD.
Unfortunately, two things went wrong which combined might mean a total loss.
The buyer mixed up their home and work addresses, including parts of both, actual street/town address being one part and postcode of the other. This meant RM decided not to attempt delivery at either, understandably. This results in the item going to their national returns centre where they open and examine the package for the senders address. Problem 2: Idiot (me) didn't put that info in there.
Items at their returns centre with a declared value of £50 or less are "disposed of" (I wonder if this is a nice little earner for someone - I was told they have ~1 MILLION items there) Items above this value, they attempt to match up the item package and contents description with the report I provided. They seemed reasonably confident this will happen, but may take up to 30 days. Assuming it does happen successfully, the item is then returned to me. If not, item gone.
The process also highlighted another potential problem, whilst it would seem rather unlikely as there are several conditions needing to be met, there is a potential scam opportunity here. When I initially called to try and understand why the delivery failed, I simply gave the tracking number and destination address, both of which an unscrupulous buyer would be fairly likely to have. Had the recipient been a scammer (he's not in this case) and called before me, they would have control of the process with the sender being locked out and facing loss with little recourse.
I'm not sure it's necessary to ensure the address you are given is accurate, I reckon this is likely to be a fairly unusual event, but for higher value items you might choose to do so. But what you absolutely should do, is put a bloody sender return address in there. Don't be like me!
You might have enjoyed a smile at my stupidity and that's fine, if this post stops even one person having the same issue in future, it'll have been worth it.
Edit: there may be a possibility to claim for insured value, though I would somewhat surprised assuming the item cannot be traced, if they were to cover it given they haven't really done much wrong. (except perhaps failing to match up my description to one of the ~million items there...)
I recently sold an item here, value £200, sent via RMSD.
Unfortunately, two things went wrong which combined might mean a total loss.
The buyer mixed up their home and work addresses, including parts of both, actual street/town address being one part and postcode of the other. This meant RM decided not to attempt delivery at either, understandably. This results in the item going to their national returns centre where they open and examine the package for the senders address. Problem 2: Idiot (me) didn't put that info in there.
Items at their returns centre with a declared value of £50 or less are "disposed of" (I wonder if this is a nice little earner for someone - I was told they have ~1 MILLION items there) Items above this value, they attempt to match up the item package and contents description with the report I provided. They seemed reasonably confident this will happen, but may take up to 30 days. Assuming it does happen successfully, the item is then returned to me. If not, item gone.
The process also highlighted another potential problem, whilst it would seem rather unlikely as there are several conditions needing to be met, there is a potential scam opportunity here. When I initially called to try and understand why the delivery failed, I simply gave the tracking number and destination address, both of which an unscrupulous buyer would be fairly likely to have. Had the recipient been a scammer (he's not in this case) and called before me, they would have control of the process with the sender being locked out and facing loss with little recourse.
I'm not sure it's necessary to ensure the address you are given is accurate, I reckon this is likely to be a fairly unusual event, but for higher value items you might choose to do so. But what you absolutely should do, is put a bloody sender return address in there. Don't be like me!
You might have enjoyed a smile at my stupidity and that's fine, if this post stops even one person having the same issue in future, it'll have been worth it.
Edit: there may be a possibility to claim for insured value, though I would somewhat surprised assuming the item cannot be traced, if they were to cover it given they haven't really done much wrong. (except perhaps failing to match up my description to one of the ~million items there...)
