eBay

faircrochet · ‎04-18-2015

I received my first resolution center issue yesterday - a buyer in mexico says he didn't receive his item and wants a refund. After two months if it hasn't arrived (even to Mexico) I would without question refund immediately, so I'm kind of ticked off he opened a resolution center case and gave me a defect, but that's another issue.

What I'm warning against is a glitch in paypal. I checked first to make sure I had enough funds. Then I processed the refund through the resolution center. Paypal put it through as an echeck, which not only will try to take money out of an empty bank account but will irritate the customer trying to get the refund (I hate echecks so I'm sure he does too)! I called paypal and the first operator put me through to a second person to investigate further. They verified the details and eventually apologized, saying it was a mistake, that they should have used my paypal balance to fund the refund and can't explain why that didn't happen. But once an echeck has started it's too late to stop it. They asked me to ask the bank to stop it and promised to cover any bank fees involved in the transaction, so even though my customer will still be annoyed at least I won't be out any more money. Let's hope he doesn't leave negative feedback now.

I suspect that the glitch happened because my refund was to be in Canadian dollars, while my only balance at the time was in US dollars. Paypal says this shouldn't have made any difference, that they should have used CA$ first and then used the US$ if there was anything still owing (just like with purchases) and only then resorted to an echeck if there was still something owing. But that didn't happen.

So beware of resolution center refunds defaulting to echecks, especially if the currency involved is different from your current balance currency. Perhaps if I had gone into paypal and refunded directly from the transaction this wouldn't have happened.

pocomocomputing · ‎04-18-2015

From my experience, you have to have a balance in the currency that you want to use and PayPal will not convert for you. You would have to exchange first some of the US $ to Can $.

Another interesting quirk for this is using PayPal ShipNow feature to create a shipping label. I sometime check what it might cost to ship somewhere using this feature. It will not work if you are testing an address with Canada Post if there are not enough funds to cover the service. Now I just want to test to get a PayPal rate but I can't do this if I do not have enough $Can funds. Anyone experience this quirk? I do have a CC on file with PayPal.

faircrochet · ‎04-18-2015

pocomocomputing wrote:

From my experience, you have to have a balance in the currency that you want to use and PayPal will not convert for you. You would have to exchange first some of the US $ to Can $.

Yes, from now on if I have another case like that (and I hope I won't) I'll make sure the balance available is in the same currency as the refund. The paypal rep called it a mistake - possiby one of those things that they know about but is about one millionth place down the list of things to fix. (Although I've got to say I have very few problems with paypal, and they were very quick to offer to reimburse me for anything this might cost.)

jt-libra · ‎04-18-2015

My PayPal balance is always in US funds and, whenever I've sent a refund, they've always converted the funds if necessary. I've never had to convert funds prior to the refund. Now perhaps things have changed recently .... I don't know.

There was one time, a couple of years ago, when like card-zone, PayPal sent the refund by e-check, even though I had sufficient funds in my account. I didn't want the buyer to wait 8 or 9 days so I called P.P., they apologized, and told me to go ahead and refund the buyer again, and they would cancel the e-check (which never happened). The buyer ended up with two refunds. I contacted her and explained that PayPal had made an error and, because she received the refund twice, I would send her an invoice to retrieve the money. I did that .... she didn't pay. I knew PayPal would make things right (which they did) but I wanted to contact the buyer to let her know that I knew she had received the refund twice. She didn't care, obviously.

Anyway, I'll be careful next time I have to send a refund in Canadian funds. To be safe, I may convert in advance so as not to run into the same issue as card-zone.

pjcdn2005 · ‎04-18-2015

My PayPal balance is always in US funds and, whenever I've sent a refund, they've always converted the funds if necessary. I've never had to convert funds prior to the refund.

If you only list in U.S. funds they wouldn't have to convert the money on your end. I believe that the OP sells in both currencies so that could be the difference since some refunds would be in Cdn $ and some in U.S.

faircrochet · ‎04-18-2015

Yes, that

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

I believe that the OP sells in both currencies so that could be the difference since some refunds would be in Cdn $ and some in U.S.

Yes, that's right. I used to be only CA$ but in the last couple of months got brave and started to list on .COM in US$ as well. I'll just have to be careful and check what currency the I've got available.

jt-libra · ‎04-18-2015

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

If you only list in U.S. funds they wouldn't have to convert the money on your end. I believe that the OP sells in both currencies so that could be the difference since some refunds would be in Cdn $ and some in U.S.

Of course .... that makes sense. Thanks.