@femmefan1946 wrote:
After offering the complete refund, including the shipping cost to send the item, I did mention that ebay would be sending a message to ask them to agree to the cancellation. I received no reply. So I did the refund through paypal last night and this morning I started the cancellation process with ebay. Still no reply.
Again, you acted too soon. You should have held the refund until the cancellation was done. You should not have refunded until you had the item back in your hands.
I'm a bit perplexed here. Wouldn't cancelling the transaction (i.e. waiting either until the buyer agreed to cancel, or cancelling after 7 days) effectively remove the seller's ability to refund if in fact the buyer was being honest and returned the item -- which is, admittedly, likely not the case here? Wouldn't it also remove the electronic trail -- via Paypal -- that would protect the seller by confirming the details of a refund?
I can see that doing things in this order would get the seller's fees back, but what would happen in a situation where the buyer found the transaction cancelled and assumed the seller was pulling a fast one by trying to make the whole thing disappear? The buyer might be inclined to leave negative FB and strafe the seller's DSRs before the seller had an opportunity to refund, and especially if waiting for the item to be returned. Unfortunately cancelled transactions don't cancel the ability to leave FB. I think if I received a truly defective or broken item, contacted the seller, then received a request to cancel the transaction, I'd get rather ornery (and suspicious), and refuse the cancellation.
The OP will never really know if her buyer was being honest or not. I think if I were presented with this scenario I'd err on the side of caution to try to protect my DSRs, and offer to refund upon return of the item, then cancel the transaction. At that point, presumably the buyer is happy enough with how the seller has handled the matter to either agree to the cancellation or not bother to respond, in which case the seller can close it and get a fee refund. I think the chances of getting reasonable FB/DSRs in that case -- assuming an honest buyer -- are better than in attempting to cancel the transaction before refunding.
I don't know -- I suppose the approach a seller takes to this kind of thing depends a lot on how easily she can absorb potential bad FB, etc. and what the item value is. With a ca. $100+ item, I'd be insisting on return before refunding; with a $20 item, I might refund in the hope that gesture would encourage the buyer to agree to a cancellation. Still, smaller sellers can't afford such largesse very often.
As I said, I think this area (sellers feeling obliged to refund before -- or without -- a return of the item) is a large gap in eBay policy that needs to be addressed somehow.
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