Someone asked me this question last week and I had to think. It certainly used to be 45 days but is it 30 days now? I couldn’t remember. Try searching for the answer and you’ll find it’s remarkably elusive.
On the eBay Money Back Guarantee page, there is this advice for buyers: “You’ll need to contact the seller within 30 days of the actual delivery date, or the estimated delivery date if an item hasn’t arrived.”
And then a reader wrote in with an interesting case. He sold an item to an overseas buyer on 23rd December and yet in the first week of March an INR claim was found against him and the buyer refunded. So how is that possible?
The answer lies in where the 30 day countdown begins for an INR claim and the answer is that it starts on the latter of the two estimated delivery dates. In this case, and don’t forget this was an overseas sales, the eBay estimated delivery dates were between January 17th and February 9th. So an INR claim made in early March was correct under the rules.
Even for domestic delivery, some of eBay’s delivery estimates can seem rather long, so it’s worth bearing in mind that buyers will always have more than 30 days from purchase to file for a refund on an item not received.
8 Responses
it can be 180 days or even more if they pay with paypal and even longer if paid by regular credit card,
best of luck Stuff you sell with these icebergs and U boats on your voyage in the good ship Ebay Titanic
30 days after the Estimated Delivery date
That date is derived from your own handling time and whichever carrier you choose
After the 30th day they can still open the case but you as a seller have the option to close it down and the buyer cannot ask eBay to step in
The Paypal back door for refunds is bad news for sellers.
We had a fraudulent Israeli buyer a couple of years ago, who was a repeat offender on Ebay for not receiving stuff.
When we refused his rude, brusque demands for a refund, he by-passed Ebay and got refunded via paypal.
We then noticed our Ebay listings were being ended and it transpired that Paypal had told Ebay we had not refunded the Israeli without intervention, so Ebay limited our account for months.
The BIG question is this :-
WHY ARE SELLERS HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR INR AT ALL ??????
It is the delivery companies who are negligent. If a seller can PROVE the item was sent, the customer claim should go to the delivery company, not the seller who has done NOTHING wrong.
The laws need to be changed to be fair to both sides.
INR claims are a part of selling online the problem with eBay is the number of claims is far higher than other marketplaces.
Amazon police the claims and quickly catch any buyer abusing the system eBay actively encourage the claims and turn a blind eye to the serial abusers of the MBG
Long term this attitude from eBay will damage the eBay brand and drive good users away from the marketplace.
Until recently eBay punished its customers the sellers when buyers claimed INR a crazy system that only resulted in back door claims and off the record refunds this was a clear example of out of touch with the problem eBay are luckily they saw sense in the end and scrapped the defect ideas.
Here is the buyers feedback profile who I have been monitoring for a few weeks who is clearly claiming for far more than normal INR and yet eBay have done nothing even though the buyer has been reported numerous times its quite sad to see sellers have no protection and a blind eye is turned by eBay to this sort of behaviour
https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=dontikas75&ftab=FeedbackLeftForOthers
I’m more concerned that as a seller I am liable for the return postage.
With overseas customers I have therefore paid to post it overseas and paid for it to be returned,all tracked and expensive.
Buyers are aware of this which increases their leverage for a partial refund or they open up a claim and I get the item back and lose.
How to mitigate your loss and where is there any seller protection ?