Who is responsible for parts lost in the mail?

I ordered a few things from Serra Toyota of Decatur through the Toyota parts website and they shipped USPS. According to the scans, one package never left Decatur and is lost. Serra says that per their T&C, once it leaves their hands, they are no longer responsible for it. He also said that if I filed a credit card dispute, Toyota would ban me from shopping online. What would you do?

 

Once it's handed over to USPS, it's technically "yours" and you'll need to file a claim with USPS. The sender cannot do that on your behalf. My wife did online sales for 8 years and ran into this a lot when USPS screwed up and lost stuff.

 

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/w...s-you-never-got-or-you-get-unordered-products


Onus is on the seller according to FTC. Toyota can’t ban you from ordering.. . Worse they could possibly do is flag the card you use for a chargeback

 

That's just dealing with delays in the seller actually shipping the item out - once it hits the shipping vendor, it's a whole different deal. USPS will usually work with both sides if they end up losing the item, and a lot of the results will depend on insured value and all that fun stuff.

 

I would go to your local post office with the tracking number and ask about it. In the past they have told me that they have tracking info only available to them. Not sure if its true or not but that's what I would do. Based on what they say you could then go online and complete a lost package claim with USPS. Hopefully, the shipping method had enough insurance to cover the cost of the item.

 

Ive been able to track down "lost" packages contacting my local post office. They contacted the last known scan in their system, that location called me and asked for a description of the item. This was a mini spool for Ford 8.8. The box had split open and they had the items in a lost and found bin. Its possible, just takes a while.

 

My local post office said to give it another week to show up and then file a claim, so that's what I'm going to do. Hopefully I can either get my stuff or my money back.

 

I’m stuck in the same limbo right now with parts shipped via USPS. ToyotaPartsDeal.com is the seller. I called them, they opened a lost package inquiry internally. Then sent a follow up email saying

“A package trace has already been filed with the courier, and we are currently waiting for the investigation to conclude. If the shipping courier confirms that the package was lost, then we will issue you a refund/replacement on your order.”

So at least in this case the seller is handling it. Not sure what they are required to do. I now will confirm who a seller will ship with before placing an order.

 

For what it’s worth, mine showed up today. Have no idea if the claim changed the course of events. Randomly about a month later, it arrives. Weird

 

I believe it's on the buyer. It's typically the buyer that chooses to buy shipping insurance or not.

That said, I've refunded buyers (and eaten the loss) because the USPS screwed something up and damaged whatever they bought from me...