Return outside the system.

[rosscd57]

I sold a radio on eBay and the buyer decided that she did not want it  - so I told here to return it for a full refund. She returned it but did not go through the eBay system - just returned it with a tracking number and I got it this morning. The original sale was on June 15/2016.

I am about to refund all her original purchase money.

My question is: given that the return did not go through the eBay return process or what ever it is called - once the money is returned does she have any type of recourse or is the sale over.

[dutchman48]

If you refund, you will get a defect as buyer did not request cancellation or return.

You may want to email her and ask her to open a return request but then you may also end up paying return shipping.

Isn't bay just grand with rules that don't fit the mold?

You also won't get your FVF's back if you just refund.

[musicyouneed]

I would just refund her through paypal.  I had an INR and I refunded through paypal and did not get a defect.  I wouldn't go through ebay.

[dutchman48]

If there is no request for a refund or cancellation on file, you leave yourself open for defects. This has been discussed at other times as people were refunding through paypal to avoid the defect for out of stock!

[snoopwiz]

How have you managed to correctly predict a return from a purchase being made in another 2 weeks?   🙂

[rosscd57]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I refunded through PayPal and did not get a defect - I can eat the eBay fees. I relisting it for more money than the first time.

One other thing of interest - I had to pay $16.52 Customs Duty to pick it up because buyer they marked it a gift instead of a return. I phoned Customs, reported the problem and they referred me to their site where I filled out a G2S for for a full refund.

[pjcdn2005]

My question is: given that the return did not go through the eBay return process or what ever it is called - once the money is returned does she have any type of recourse or is the sale over.

As long as you refunded her through the actual paypal transaction, she wouldn't have any recourse to then file for a nad or something like that.

I'm not sure when you sold the item as  it couldn't have been on June 15, 2016 but if it was less than 30 days, you could have still gone through ebay to cancel the sale. You would have received your fees back and would not have received a defect.  Defects for cancellations are for out of stock items and since the item had been mailed out...you obviously weren't out of stock. I've done one or two returns like that and didn't have a problem. If for some reason there was a problem and the buyer asked for a return in ebay messages...you have proof that the cancellation was instigated by the buyer.

If it is more than 30 days since payment and the buyer didn't go through the return process, your only option was to refund through Paypal. I've had to do that as well and didn't have a problem.  Now.....if  I thought I was going to get the return back after 30 days from payment, I might ask the buyer to go through the returns process so that I could refund through ebay and get my fees back.  (I'm fairly sure that if the return process is used, a cancellation can be done after 30 days)  But....if a buyer asked me about a return in a message, I would to hate to ask them to open a return with eBay since I don't see why I should have to ask them to do that extra step when we are both capable of doing the return between the two of us.