Buyer did a charge back a couple of days after I shipped the item - curious about best next steps

[skorpiius]

Good evening.

I sold an item to a US buyer and a couple of days after it shipped he did a charge back to PayPal claiming unauthorized purchase while it was still in transit.

The item has tracking and Paypal has acknowledged the tracking and indicate they are investigating.

So aside from the PayPal angle, I'm curious what I should do on the Ebay side.

1 - The buyer never contacted me he just did the chargeback

2 - The 'unauthorized purchase' seems suspect to me since it was shipped to his registered paypal address, from his buying history he mostly buys the exact type of item he bought from me, and his profile photo is even related to the type of item (it's an older person hobby)

If I do lose the money I am only out $15 (excluding lost profit), so should I just wash my hands of it, or should I report this to Ebay? In my mind doing any of that puts me of risk of getting a negative feedback which is more costly than $15.

Thoughts?

Thanks

[reallynicestamps]

As I understand it, PP will look at the tracking number and the address, and eventually find in your favour, although that can still mean a 30 -day hold.

The mills of the gods have nothing on PP investigations.

Buyers skip eBay and PP when they don't buy here often. The Resolution Centre is apparently hard to find.

And if he bought using his card, he may not realize the payment was processed through PP.

[reallynicestamps]

You might add him to your Blocked Bidder List, although if he is a 'guest' buyer that may be moot.

If he is a long time member, check his Feedback Left For Others for indications of sketchiness.

There was a buyer on dotCOM Boards the other day, whinging about a seller who had the nerve to be in Canada, but shipping from the USA. Only this time the seller shipped from Canada (well, the border is closed, honey). So obviously the Canadian was a lying piece of beaver tail.

[marnotom!]

If it’s an “unauthorized use” chargeback you’re getting, it may well be that someone other than the person who “bought” your items filed that chargeback.

[ricarmic]

I relatively recently had one of these, the cause of the unauthorized chargeback was that he used an expired card (by accident). I called him to find out what happened.

Mine was not tracked so I lost the $$ and got billed the $20 chargeback fee. (because I accepted the chargeback, I'm not sure I should have done that)

However, because I happen to "live" in a pretty honest crowd, my buyer paid me back again as well as paying for the $20 chargeback fee too. (and he purchased more stuff down the road as well - successfully!)

PS this does bring a remembrance smile to my face as I could hear his wife in the background giving him whatfor for using the expired card!

[skorpiius]

Thanks for all of the tips everyone.

The buyer actually contacted me today saying he got a message from his bank about a security issue with the purchase.  It seems his bank decided that the first 10 character of my paypal registered email address was my 'username' and since that didn't match my ebay username then there must be fraud happening and auto-reversed the charge... I've asked him to send me what his bank provided and then if he does I may just call Paypal since the web-response forces me to just provide tracking info with a comment and they already have that.