Day: February 26, 2024

I can’t quite understand what’s going on. After contacting la Poste this morning to find out why I haven’t received a parcel that it said had been delivered into my mailbox, out of the blue I’ve just received an email from Aliexpress saying that my order has been cancelled and I’m being refunded the full purchase amount.

There can’t be any connection between the two events because there’s no reason why la Poste should have been in contact with Aliexpress so it would appear that Aliexpress has itself become involved independently behind the scenes with the seller.

When I checked my order status on the Aliexpress web site the information given is to the effect that the order was cancelled and refunded due to an incorrect order tracking number having been provided by the seller who will be sanctioned in accordance with the platform’s (Aliexpress’s) rules.

OK, that’s good as far as it goes, but although the original web page for the bike I ordered has now been taken down, there are still several in a similar style on Aliexpress, probably from the same ‘seller’, for similar bikes several of which are now even cheaper than the price of the one I ordered. If the ‘seller’ is a scammer, surely Aliexpress should have picked that up, closed them all down and booted the ‘seller’ off?

And there’s another thing. How come la Poste could provide tracking data for ‘my’ parcel right up to the point of delivery? There’s one explanation I can think of, which is that a legitimate label was created by this, or another legitimate, seller for a real bike being delivered to a buyer in France. The scam ‘seller’ then spoofed a copy of the label with my name and address on it and sent it to me.

Are you with me so far? The legitimate sale would then track properly through the system until it was delivered into its buyer’s mailbox – which wouldn’t have been mine, which is why it wasn’t in my mailbox even though I had been told that it had been delivered. It would also explain why my ‘delivery’ appeared to be early, as the label that had been spoofed was probably by then a few days old.

I don’t know how Aliexpress got onto this but fortunately I paid using Paypal so I’ll get my refund in a couple of days, although buyers who used other payment methods could have more difficulty. I’ll be able to relax once I’ve received it and then I’ll be able to decide whether to go for another new e-bike at the proper price, especially as I’ve already bought my safety helmet 🙂

It’ll also be interesting to hear what la Poste have to say when they come back to me as I think they’ll say yes, the parcel I queried was delivered correctly – just not to me 😕

Still no sign of my new e-bike but it appears that my assumption about the postman confusing the two parcels that were being delivered to me in the depot was incorrect. La Poste had applied its own postage label over the original Chinese one on the packaging that had contained the bike helmet that was delivered on Saturday and when I took a closer look at it I found another delivery reference. When I checked that I found that the system is confirming delivery of that parcel.

So according to la Poste, two parcels were dropped off into my mailbox on Saturday – the helmet and my new e-bike. This is total nonsense, of course, because the Chinese supplier of the bike had already sent me a copy of the label confirming despatch of the bike which showed a gross weight for the package of 38.6 kg and there’s no way that that would anything like fit into my mailbox.

So what’s going on? La Poste has a help line which I’ve tried using several times today but, surprise surprise, it doesn’t work properly. When you key in a number in the multi-choice menu it just keeps talking to you, which isn’t that surprising because such systems operated by public sector businesses in France rarely do function as intended. I think it’s a ploy to stop you contacting them with problems, but you must draw your own conclusions…

But luckily I’ve got a la Poste on line account and in it I can access a virtual assistant. Amazingly, on this occasion I do seem to have succeeded in making a claim for non-delivery of a parcel. La Poste has said that the delivery service will get back to me with a detailed response within 48 hours and have given me a claim reference. However, I’m used to playing this game with EDF and Enedis and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this will be enough to resolve the situation. I’ll have to wait and see.