Can I say this and would there be any fall out?

[musicyouneed]

I noticed this on a listing and I thought it very good.  Can I use it, would there be a problem?

If you are not happy with your purchase for any reason you may return it to us within 14 days of receipt. It must be returned well packaged and in the same condition as received. We will refund the purchase cost (postage costs will only be refunded for faulty or damaged items).

[momcqueen]

You can but technically that's not precisely allowed as such, as a refund for Returns is supposed to include the entire amount tendered to you which includes original postage paid by the buyer. The way around that is through a seller 'restocking fee' that might be equal to the amount of original postage paid but that too is a bit of a grey area which will soon be managed by ebay's more formal returns process. 

Most sellers accept the postage loss as the cost of doing business and price to keep a remorseful buyer happy. It's not worth the defect or ill-feelings, in my opinion.

In my own listings, I warn that 'item may be subject to a restocking fee' but I have yet to actually have an item returned and I don't think I'd apply the restocking fee if one was returned anyway unless there were extremely extenuating circumstances.

Best to take the lump and move onward.

But every seller here has a different tolerance for risk and/or item loss. With a return, at least you have the item back in your possession to resell whereas an unhappy buyer could also just create mischief if it seemed like they didn't want what they ordered and returning it was too much of a hassle. So.....

Go ahead and add it to your listings but if you've copied it verbatim from another seller, please have the courtesy of sending them a message to say, hey! you like what they've done and would like to paraphrase it for your own purposes. That would be polite.

Let us know how this works for you.

[rose-dee]

I've seen this on a lot of seller's listings, but the reality is that ultimately eBay may decide whether you refund the buyer's original shipping, because if the buyer decides not to be agreeable and opens a case, you may be obliged to refund the original shipping anyway (unless you stipulate no returns and it's a buyer's remorse situation). 

Personally I would wait before considering adding this language to your listings.  The entire returns process is going to be changed come February, 2016, and the overall defect rate will be reduced.  In addition, unresolved cases (where a buyer asks eBay to step in and the seller is found to be at fault) will count as defects and will be counted toward the seller's unresolved case percentage. 

Effectively this means that buyers will quickly learn that if they open a case over a refund/return, their seller will pay their original shipping to avoid any possibility of the new high-risk defect.  I'd wait to see how this all plays out before changing anything in your listings. 

[pjcdn2005]

If you are going to write something like that, it must be in your return policy (under shipping tab) in order to make it eBay valid. Original shipping can not be held back if shipping was free to begin with or if the return is for a snad. I would probably not mention that it will only be returned if is faulty etc as that might just make the buyer force a snad claim so that they will get back original and return shipping.

[pjcdn2005]

It is allowed to specify some things like that in your return policy. 

[reallynicestamps]

Are you actually getting a lot of returns or requests for returns?

If not, I would not encourage returns by giving a long dissertation about them.

Also, how much of your description actually shows when viewed on a mobile? Are you fairly sure your customer will read it?

Since you sell used CDs, do you think your customers are copying discs and then returning for a full refund?

I guess the question is: is there a problem? and will this solve the problem?

[reallynicestamps]

And would it help if you did not refer to used CDs (however lightly) as "mint" ? Or does mint mean something different in the CD world than in most collectible fields where it would mean 'never used'?

[mr.elmwood]

I focus my efforts on getting and maintaining actual sales.

I do not focus any attention on the mythical' "what if" that will never happen.

[musicyouneed]

Thanks for all the advice.  I am not going to change anything right now.  I only ever had one request for a return in 10 years and it was because he wanted a different CD to the one he bought and he was from England. Because I offer free domestic shipping I add $3.00 to the price of the CD.  Well long and short of it, I would have lost about $8.00 in shipping & envelope should he have returned the CD.  I just wanted to discourage returns because they changed their mind because most of the money was paid in shipping. 

I take the word MINT to describe something that looks like it just came out of the wrapping, not a mark on it, no jewel case imprints, jewel case brand new.  

I had several hundred CD's that were all brand new but the jewel case was cracked badly.  So I took them out photographed them and put them in new jewel cases and listed them and called them MINT.  Are they MINT?  I don't know, they are no longer brand new, as I took them out of the wrapping, they are better than very good.  How do you describe them?

Advice needed right this minute:

I am just in the process of listing another brand new CD and just noticed a small hairline crack in the jewel case.  It is still in wrapping. Do I take it out of the wrapping and photograph it and call it  what?????  Or do I list it as brand new and then somewhere in the description which can get lost, say there is a small crack in the jewel case.  Buyers are very **bleep** about jewel cases.  I have seen them give negatives because the jewel case was broken when it arrived.   

[rose-dee]

I always say it's wiser to under-promise and over-deliver, i.e. to try to exceed buyers' expectations.

I have a somewhat similar problem with my "dead stock" commercial sewing patterns.  These are patterns that were never used, never cut from the large sheets, still folded exactly as they came from the factory, and in all likelihood never taken out of the packages.  In the case of one manufacturer, even the original plastic envelopes in which the patterns were packed are still factory-sealed.

However, most of the packages have some minor storage wear and tear, and some may have the store's "No refund" stamp on the front.  Are they new?  They are definitely brand new as patterns, the contents are exactly as they were when delivered from the original factory, but as a whole package, they aren't mint or perfect.  I list them as used, but I state clearly, right up front in the "Condition" section (which will appear just below the item title), that they are unused, still factory-folded and uncut.  If you keep this condition wording fairly short, the whole thing will show up on the initial listing display, even for mobile viewers.

My feeling is that as soon as you crack open an original package, whether to put the contents in a new package or not, it's used for all purposes on eBay.  If you don't open the original package, you can at least say the contents have never been used, and note the small scratch in the jewel case in your condition section. 

BTW, I don't know whether there's something amiss with the .jpeg photo you posted above, but when I clicked on it, my computer got completely frozen and hung up.  You might be able to ask the moderators to remove it if you think it could be a problem.