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Eight years on ebay and this is a first for me. Tuesday evening on ebay I sell 5000 Lincoln coppers. Immediately following the auction ebay sends me the typical computer generated email giving the buyer's name and shipping address which is in Quincy, MA. So I already have the box sealed and now I type my own address label and the box is good to go pending payment. The next morning the buyer pays through paypal and for the first time in 8 years paypal gives me a completely different (confirmed) shipping address which is in Kingsland, GA instead of Quincy, MA. The same person's name is on both shipping address. So after two days of emails the buyer hasn't contacted me so today I call paypal and they tell me to ship it to the GA address which they have on record and that I will (only) be covered by them if I send it to the GA address.

So I then call ebay and give them the situation and they tell me (not) to send it to the GA address but instead send it to the MA address that ebay has on record and this way I will be protected in case an ebay dispute is opened by the buyer saying he didn't receive the package. So I tell the ebay rep that it is ridiculous for ebay and paypal to put me in this situation with each telling me to ship it to a different address and saying I won't be protected if I send it to the other address. I told her that I wanted ebay to contact paypal and get their act together and when they come up with a single address I will then ship the package. She said that is not their procedure and that it is up to (me) to contact the buyer and get the correct address. The ebay rep then gives me the procedure to acquire the buyers phone number and she tells me to call him and ship it where he tells me to. So I call and no answer today with no answering machine so I will try again this evening.

The buyer has over 2000 transactions and he's received 5 feedbacks this week alone so I don't understand why this address discrepancy hasn't been brought to his attention and rectified. Frankly I don't like the whole situation and would prefer to cancel the transaction but then I will probably not be able to recoup my fees and maybe even get a negative from the buyer.

Any advice from experienced ebayers would be much appreciated, Don.

DO NOT SHIP untill the buyer contacts you!! Paypal and ebay will both avoid the issue if it comes up. Now that you have contacted both of of them they may have notes so any problems with this transaction they probably will walk away from. If the buyer is slow to getting back with you than that is his/her own fault. My 2 cents is to wait.

I agree I would wait until you talk to the buyer. He will get back to you eventually, he might be out of town for the weekend.

Both places have ship yards, so he may have moved if he works on boats.

I agree to wait until you hear from the buyer.

I had an old address show up when I asked someone to send me a PayPal invoice. I saw it in the brief second after I'd clicked the button to confirm payment. This was after my current address was confirmed!

There's a great answer center under the Community tab on the bay, in case you want advice from folks closer to the action.

VWBEAMER wrote:Both places have ship yards, so he may have moved if he works on boats.

WVBEAMER you may be right as the buyer's user ID has the word "sea" in it.

Thanks guys for the sound advice. I'll give an update when I have one.

Wait, when you do hear from the buyer, he should be happy that you waited. Even better if you can talk to him on the phone. Then you might be able to negotiate a direct buy price and gain a buyer.

Wait for the buyer to respond at this point, but generally you ship to the address that comes through with the PayPal payment. eBay will show their default shipping address in the end-of-auction email, but a buyer could have multiple confirmed shipping addresses and can choose one of them when he goes through the PayPal checkout. I have multiple confirmed addresses, and I don't always use the default one.

**UPDATE**

Tonight I finally had someone pick up the phone at the number ebay provided. It turns out the person who is on the ebay and paypal accounts lives at both address and (she) is currently living and working out of the Georgia address. The person who answered the phone is the boyfriend who lives at his girlfriend's Massachusetts' second home and he said he actually was the buyer of the lincoln cents and that he buys on ebay using her account. He asked me to ship the coins to the MA address which was the shipping address given by ebay and not the Georgia address given by Paypal.

I don't like shipping to an address not supplied by paypal but ebay instructed me to send the package to the address the buyer provided. But it gets tricky because the (buyer) is not the actual owner of the ebay/paypal accounts but is instead only the boyfriend.

The boyfriend said he would send me an email telling me to send the package to the MA address so I would have a record of his request.

My question is should I send it to the MA address? Remember paypal told me I would not be covered if I sent it to the MA address instead of the Georgia address.

the person that owns the account is the legal buyer.remember in a court of law they only look at the facts.i would only take directions from the account owner.

I have 2 confirmed addresses as well. Most things go to my PO Box, but non-USPS packages like heavy coin machines I have delivered to me at work. I think as long as you have the email from the ebay account holder specifying that the item should be shipped to the alternative address you should be fine. Or you could just ship it to one of our fine members down in GA and talk them into hand delivering it and getting a signed receipt. Better yet, have them take a bag of their own pennies over and you just agree on some price to pay them.. that way you save on shipping!

or for a small fee, I can deliver a box of local pennies to the Quincy address... kinda like a western union transfer

I think it will be ok either way.