eBay Return Requests response needed in 3 days from May

eBay have informed us that the change announced in the seller release regarding return requests has been paused and will not be implemented until further notice.

90% of the time, sellers on eBay UK respond to a buyer returns request within 3 business days and that is now to become the new standard from May 2020, as announced in the eBay Spring 2020 Seller Release.

Previously, the time a seller has to respond when a buyer opens a return request or an eBay Money Back Guarantee (eMBG) was 8 calendar days and for most people (especially businesses) that’s pretty excessive. Even in these times where businesses are mobilising to cope with the Coronavirus, responding to customers is still key and most businesses shouldn’t have too much trouble responding to returns requests once every three days as a minimum.

It’s also worth remembering that due to the Coronavirus, new temporary eBay Money Back Guarantee policy extensions give you 5 business days to issue a refund, from the date that the tracking confirms the item has been delivered back to you. This gives you a little more flexibility although we’d still recommend you keep on top of them and refund in a timely manner where possible. This however is time to handle returns once they arrive back at your premises, not additional time to respond to a returns request.

At the same time to take account of the fact that buyers may be ill or self isolating due to a family member showing Coronavirus symptoms, new eBay temporary returns extensions offer buyers up to 21 business days to post a return back to you, from the moment you accept a return and they receive a returns postage label.

We are still hearing complaints that some buyers are intentionally or purposefully using the US eBay site to initiate returns which bypasses the entire UK returns process and incidentally means they don’t get a postage label through eBay. This shouldn’t happen if buyers just used the eBay UK site to initiate returns requests and we’re not quite sure what’s directing them to the UK site.

To summarise, from May you only have three days to respond to a return request and so you will need to deal with return requests at least twice a week, but if you’re a typical seller you probably already address them on a daily basis to get them out of the way.