Ebay falling apart. Impossible to resolve returns, in danger of losing money to automated system

[shallow_karl]

A customer cancelled an order about 30 mins after placing it.  Went to do refund, it failed.  Tried again, it failed.  Ebay phone help-line reports as "disconnected."  Customer files case that "he didn't receive item."  Second CASE shows up for SAME item.  Meanwhile, automated system says, "refund by 4th of Apr to prevent account issues."  Go to Ebay's help page, reports "No phone help available, email us." 

All I can say is, remove your automatic payment options, keep it to ONE ONLY (paypal, bank, CC). but keep and EYE on your money.  There is no telling what is going to happen.  Also, if you refund directly from paypal, you will LOSE seller fees AND  the end-customer won't (if they paid any) get their taxes back.

[mrdutch1001]

Sellers need to stay informed by reading eBay announcements as eBay phone support is no longer available during this time and it was announced that all eBay support was being conducted via email.

As to "Also, if you refund directly from paypal, you will LOSE seller fees AND the end-customer won't (if they paid any) get their taxes back." - there were announcements about that as well as PayPal sending emails to all its customers....and apparently it is the responsibility of the seller to calculate and allot any taxes needing to be refunded, within the that refund amount.

[cumos55]

Contact Tyler  , our eBay Canada chat session person for help

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user-id/504096

[femmefan1946]

tyler@ebay 

The OP is having trouble refunding his customer.

@shallow_karl A customer cancelled an order about 30 mins after placing it. Went to do refund, it failed.

Customers cannot cancel. They can only request that the seller cancel. Did you start by cancelling the transaction? That should have triggered an automatic refund.

Tried again, it failed.

It is also possible that the customer backs his PP purchases with a bank account. In that case, he wrote an "e-cheque" that has to clear the banking system before being cancelled.

Customer files case that "he didn't receive item."

If you had formally cancelled the transaction, he could not open a Case/Dispute.

Since you are willing to end the transaction, accept the Dispute and click on Refund Customer.

Second CASE shows up for SAME item.

Second case or second notice? Do they have different numbers? (I believe you on this, odder things have happened.)

Meanwhile, automated system says, "refund by 4th of Apr to prevent account issues."

Since you are willing to refund, have you tried to do so within the automatic system? 

Go to Ebay's help page, reports "No phone help available, email us."

As stated above, there is no phone support currently.

If you still can't refund within the case, use the email link, or Twitter or Facebook, all of which are working.

[pjcdn2005]

 Was the buyer in the US and did they pay tax?

If so, the problem might be that you don't have enough in your PP account. When you do a cancellation or full refund, you now have to have enough in your Paypal account to refund the full amount that the buyer paid. So if the buyer paid tax (which ebay already took out) you have to refund the full amount including tax and then ebay will credit you that tax amount.   If you don't have enough in there, the quickest way to add it is to have a friend send you the money through PP.  If you add it from your bank account it will take a few days.