ebay makes it easy for buyers to claim INR and get refunded but not easy to repay a refund.

[patken123]

This is just an observation,(with all due respect) I'm not really looking for advice here.

It only took 3 months but this morning I finally recieved the 4 items which I had ordered in October and got refunded 3 weeks ago( after filing an INR.with ebay).

Getting a refund was very easy  through ebay (which was a matter of few clicks) , but when I tried to re-pay the seller  this afternoon,I had a hard time finding any traces of my transaction since the case was already closed!

I decided to send money with paypal but  to do that one would need the seller's email address or phone #,etc. well, the only email address of the seller I could find on paypal  was written in Chinese alphabets!.

Ended up finding the seller's email address (in English) in one of my outlook emails correspondence which I had saved.paid the seller through paypal, had to copy and paste the transaction ID#,plus each items reference # so the seller would know where the money had come from.

I do appreciate the fact that ebay has made it easy for buyers to get refunded(soon after filing an INR),  but I would also like to see  ebay to facilitate the repaying  to any seller  by  designing some sort of a form showing the transaction id #s, all the reference  numbers of the items bought /refunded, all the dates etc.,

My point is,  ,repaying a seller should not be such an ordeal ,it should  also take a few clicks and  the seller gets repaid , just as easy as getting refunded .

[marnotom!]

Usually it's pretty straightforward to do a "send money" transaction through PayPal.  It sounds to me as though your particular case was complicated by language issues and your decision to use an email address other than the one in the PayPal "seller info". Hopefully that email address that you used links up with a PayPal account held by the seller, otherwise he might not be able to claim his payment.

[patken123]

Thanks Marnotom, ,actually that email address was not the right one but I did find the correct one in my paypal notice of payment, he accepted it ,it's all good,I still think there's some room for improvement as far as repaying an ebay seller goes,instead of having "case closed".

[mcrlmn]

On PayPal, find the PayPal transaction, and refund the seller.
You know the payment date, the seller's refund is there, and you can do the same.
I had an exact same scenario a few months ago, although I messaged the seller instead of "filing an INR.with ebay", and was surprised at how easily I refunded my refund.
Canada Post had delivered my item to an honest neighbour.

[femmefan1946]

well, the only email address of the seller I could find on paypal  was written in Chinese alphabets!.

Glad you found a solution, but I wonder if eBay and Paypal are able to support Chinese characters, wouldn't you have been able to cut and paste the address into the Paypal Send Money form?

[esclyons]

let me be the first to say thank you, i don't ship from china , where it takes a long time, but i have had a few buyers who say there item hasn't arrived, and i refunded , and just asked for a polite note if the item does show up, and i have never heard back from any of them, ever.  so either postal theft or customer theft.. so hat;'s off to you for being a stand up ebay buyer..

[patken123]

"I wonder if eBay and Paypal are able to support Chinese characters, wouldn't you have been able to cut and paste the address into the Paypal Send Money form?"

The " seller's information" on paypal's site was totally useless for me to use, I wish I could get a screenshot of it to show what I'm talking about.it was just 4 Chinese letters or characters.

When I tried to copy and paste it (since it was the only thing that resembled as"seller's email address" ),  paypal would not recognize it,  it was as if I wrote nothing there .

I'm glad I had saved all the paypal notices in a folder in my outlook account .that's where I found the sellers email address. 

I have sent money to friends/family (and a couple of times to ebay sellers) before, this was the first time I got stock due to the weird "seller's information'.  

[patken123]

let me be the first to say thank you, i don't ship from china , where it takes a long time, but i have had a few buyers who say there item hasn't arrived, and i refunded , and just asked for a polite note if the item does show up, and i have never heard back from any of them, ever.  so either postal theft or customer theft.. so hat;'s off to you for being a stand up ebay buyer..

If this comment was directed to me I would say it's the least I could do for the poor seller from China who was given only 4 weeks for his items to arrive in Canada, that was the biggest "boo boo" ebay could have made, 4 weeks is ridiculously too short of a time  for items to come (from that part of the world) to Canada.

As far as giving back his money, I bet many buyers who buy from China/HK,etc would be more willing to repay the sellers (after a refund) if it wasn't such an ordeal to do so, but many would give up trying to trace back a transaction from 2-3 months back especially when eby so quickly refunds them and then consider the case closed ,in my humble opinion ebay should leave all refund cases open at least for 3 months and leave the transactions alone in the purchase history so buyers can trace them back easily.

[pjcdn2005]

If this comment was directed to me I would say it's the least I could do for the poor seller from China who was given only 4 weeks for his items to arrive in Canada, that was the biggest "boo boo" ebay could have made, 4 weeks is ridiculously too short of a time for items to come (from that part of the world) to Canada.

You do realize that you don't have to file an item not received case immediately after the estimated time of arrival?

You have up to 30 days after the last estimated date of arrival so if eBay gave an eta of 30 days. You can file a claim up to 60 days after purchase.  Or you can file an item not received claim for up to 180 days after payment on PayPal.  I'm not saying that you should wait 60 or 180 days...just that you can wait longer than 30 if you are comfortable doing so.

Kudos to you as well for make no the effort to pay the seller after the item arrived.  I agree that it should be easier for a buyer to figure out how to do that.

t