This comes by way of a reminder because a seller contacted Tamebay this week to say that she was having trouble with eBay Defects. Nothing unusual there, we get a lot of enquiries from readers about eBay’s Defect system because it isn’t very well explained.
Her seller performance had declined over recent months and she’d had a dig about in her Defects reports. Now, that Detailed Defects Report isn’t that easy to find and I bet there are plenty of sellers who aren’t familiar with it. So here’s a reminder.
She reported that one of the Defects she was falling foul of was not refunding sellers. And of course, she had been refunding buyers that required it and doing everything a diligent seller should do. BUT. The refunds she was making were via PayPal.
For reference, if you want eBay to look kindly on your refunds then it’s vital to make refunds through eBay’s system, not that of PayPal.
Of course, the refund process on eBay has the merit of being considerably more clunky than that of PayPal and is far less convenient. But such is the system, if you don’t do your refunds via eBay they won’t credit you with doing the right thing.
The Defects system is changing next year, but in the meantime, the old regime is in force and dodging every unfair Defect you can is good practice. So make sure you refund via eBay.
7 Responses
It’s because she’s refunding but not cancelling the transaction in the right way. The eBay method is buggy and 1 time in 2 fails to credit you for fees. Via Paypal and then cancelling after 15 minutes or so, doesn’t defect and refunds fees.
The return system isnt working.I have a return and the buyer has returned.I go in to close the return but i cant.It says “due to technical issues please try again”.Phoned CS they said they would close the case in the buyers favour and then it would refund WHAT?,,id get a none seller resolution defect,worst advice they could give.So the only way to refund the buyer is through paypal.I have.Now the return still shows as open.The flow is waiting for the buyer to upload tracking i think.Its a complete mess and im not alone,CS told me the returns system wasnt working and it would be fixed,yesterday,then today etc etc.Plus if the return arrives and the buyer didnt upload tracking the only way to refund is to click the “i dont want the buyer to return refund now”,even though the buyer has returned.Not that th refund then works,it doesnt.So glad Amazon and webbie are my ain platforms now,i ight end on Ebay soon as the site simply doesnt work,and worse CS might as well not exist.
I dont use ebay’s refund system as its not always fair. To avoid defects when refunding via paypal you need to cancel the ebay transaction via ebay resolution centre and select the correct reason in the drop down menu BEFORE initiating a paypal refund
and ironically, the message ebay sends to the customer, tells them to ensure they have already received the refund BEFORE accepting any cancellation request.
I always cancel a INR or item arrived damaged/faulty message if a case has not been opened using the cancel transaction option a problem with the buyers address by doing this I don’t get a defect I get the fees back and the option to leave feedback for the buyer is not as simple and most buyer don’t bother to leave any.