Can a recipient of a COD email take the items without paying for them?

GillianUK · August 4

I ask because last 40 days ago my partner sent COD, he didn't receive payment and didn't have his items returned, we know we would have to wait the 30 days but still nothing and ZOS have been no help at all.

LootAllTheStuff · August 4

I can't see anything about the email system that would enforce COD terms. It's basically an honour system both ways - someone could equally well ask for payment up front and then not send the agreed items. The only way I can see to enforce a deal would be to meet in game and initiate a player-to-player trade.

All you can really do at this point is report the player (which it seems you have already done?) and move on. If you have a support ticket number, you could always post it here and @ mention one of the ZOS community staff to see if they can take a look.

Pcgamer · August 12

Cod works this way: the recipient of the mail must accept the payment before they are able to receive the item. There is no way of taking item without pay. It is not an honour system at all. It works to protect the players. No payment, no item.

Are you sure your partner didnt receive the gold in the mail and just didn't realise it. With cod as soon as you open your mail , you get the gold...it automatically gets added to the character's gold that character has that opened the mail.

I hope this helps. The only other thing I can think of is the receiver of the cod items has not yet accepted them so they are still sitting in the mail box. One more scenario is that your partner accidentally mispelled the recipients @ name, that happened to me one I put in one wrong letter and the person didnt get their mail but I got it returned 30 days later.

Dagoth_Rac · August 12

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

I can't see anything about the email system that would enforce COD terms. It's basically an honour system both ways - someone could equally well ask for payment up front and then not send the agreed items. The only way I can see to enforce a deal would be to meet in game and initiate a player-to-player trade.

All you can really do at this point is report the player (which it seems you have already done?) and move on. If you have a support ticket number, you could always post it here and @ mention one of the ZOS community staff to see if they can take a look.

No. COD is absolutely supported and enforced by the in-game email system and has been since launch. It only works for inventory items you can attach to email, though. If the person is using COD in a colloquial way to mean, "They promised to send me gold if I gifted them something from crown store," that is not really COD. You can't attach crown store items to an email.

Judging by OP's wording, I think they are talking about old-fashioned COD. I feel like goods should have been returned to the sender by now if other player ignored or refused COD email. But I have also heard reports before of returned mail taking unusually long.

The other possibility is that Send Gold and COD use the same fill-in box for gold amount and the default is to send gold. So it can be very easy to accidentally send someone free gold by accident instead of demanding COD.

https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/#en/answer/8278

freespirit · August 12

Oooo yes this is something I've done before now......

"The other possibility is that Send Gold and COD use the same fill-in box for gold amount and the default is to send gold. So it can be very easy to accidentally send someone free gold by accident instead of demanding COD."

Also have experienced exceedingly long return times too, sometimes a few months, then mysteriously many mails suddenly appear!!

loosej · August 12

freespirit wrote: »

Also have experienced exceedingly long return times too, sometimes a few months, then mysteriously many mails suddenly appear!!

This.

COD is enforced, the recipient can't take the attachment without doing the payment. But if the recipient doesn't accept and the mail needs to return to you, it can take an unknown amount of weeks/months to actually happen.