eBay returns – When to give a Partial refund

We’re about to enter the busiest time of the year for eBay returns, and indeed returns across the entire ecommerce industry. eBay returns are always a pain but have to be accepted as a cost of doing business, but that irks sellers more than anything is returns which aren’t in a saleable condition.

On eBay, you don’t have to simply accept damaged items, opened items, used items, or items with parts missing or damaged. There is a facility to deduct a charge to cover the cost of making the item good (or to cover your loss selling is as used) and eBay will also protect you from feedback and chargebacks to protect your account.

Make sure that your customer service team and goods in are up to speed with eBay’s Partial Refund guidance and that they check goods before simply pressing a button and refunding 100% of the sale price. When New Year arrives (assuming the postal service is back up and running), managing your returns and focusing on partial refunds if goods aren’t in pristine condition could save considerable sums over the January period.

Best advice is to take photos of the return and attach to the partial refund to demonstrate why you are not processing a 100% refund and show both the buyer and eBay that you are behaving reasonably. eBay also offer guidance as to what percentage of the sale price is appropriate to deduct from the refund.

If you have eBay returns that come back used or damaged by the buyer, or with missing parts you can issue a partial refund to retain up to 50% of the refund value. Watch the video above to discover why, when and how you can issue a partial refund to retain up to 50% of the refund value.

When you issue a partial refund for an item returned used, damaged or with missing parts, eBay will also:

• Automatically remove negative or neutral feedback, defects, and open cases in your service metrics relating to that claim.
• Protect you from any chargebacks relating to that claim.