How do I stand with this transaction?

[triber]

I sold an item last week, and yesterday, someone else purchased it, because it had stayed in my store. I have written and apologized and offered an alternative or to cancel. My questions are:

Do I ask the buyer to request a cancellation?

How do I stand with getting a defect?

It is very hard with over 700 listings in my store to check whether each one has been removed or not relisted by eBay.

[block36]

I was instructed to do (and I did) the following:

Refunded the money and requested to cancel the transaction because of BUYER'S ADDRESS although you are not restricting shipments to this location... System takes such a reason without objection.

eBay sends the message to buyer and he(she) has 2 options - to confirm cancellation or to ignore the request for confirmation.

If the request is ignored within certain number of days (to the best of recollection it is 4) your request for cancellation is granted.

I hope other sellers will confirm this route.

Good luck!

[triber]

They haven't paid yet, so there is no problem there. When I cancel, I don't know what to put for the reason, buyer didn't make a mistake, and technically I did lose or break the item, it was already sold.

[block36]

Just put down the reason "Buyer's address" because there is no more accurate reason available.

You can send a short explanation to buyer with proper apology for this confusion.

[recped]

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@block36 wrote:

Just put down the reason "Buyer's address" because there is no more accurate reason available.

You can send a short explanation to buyer with proper apology for this confusion.

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If sellers continue to lie about the reason for cancellation how long do you think it will be before eBay make ANY cancellation a defect regardless if it's the buyer or sellers.

Maybe first they will get more active at confirming these cancellations that are blamed on a buyer problem when they are actually a seller error. I can see a new seller standard coming.....file a bogus buyer related cancellation and get an instant suspension.

[hlmacdon]

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@recped wrote:

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@block36 wrote:

Just put down the reason "Buyer's address" because there is no more accurate reason available.

You can send a short explanation to buyer with proper apology for this confusion.

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If sellers continue to lie about the reason for cancellation how long do you think it will be before eBay make ANY cancellation a defect regardless if it's the buyer or sellers.

Maybe first they will get more active at confirming these cancellations that are blamed on a buyer problem when they are actually a seller error. I can see a new seller standard coming.....file a bogus buyer related cancellation and get an instant suspension.

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Fair point here. Considering some of us already have to deal with overenthusiastic tablet/smartphone buyers purchasing items by mistake or without reading all details of a listing, the last thing we need is sellers gaming the cancellation system and causing further scrutiny.

Considering this is one of the few defects that matter, sellers may want to start paying more attention to their inventory. The easiest way to do this would be to maintain a basic excel inventory, then do a dump out of turbolister's live inventory to compare against that with a vlookup. Combine that with isdntek's duplicate listing finder and you have a reasonably quick method to be proactive on this. I believe others have mentioned clearing out the unsold listings as they can be problematic in this area.

[dutchman48]

If you do not have a cancellation request from the buyer, you may get a defect. Ebay's rules are so vague for certain things, one can never be sure. If you request the cancellation, you are in trouble as the buyer did not request it

People have tried refunding through payal and got defects. People have tried the address routine but if no cancellation request by the buyer you will probably get a defect but can't get straight answers from Ebay

You also have not been paid so the address won't hold water.

Sorry to say, take your lumps and be honest and take the defect. You need 5 from separate transactions to put your status in jeopardy.

I have 2 from Ebay relisting solds, Raphael said tough and Ebay said tough, no proof it was our fault.

[dutchman48]

Cleaning out sold does not help. I had 2 relisted from sold items already

[block36]

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@recped wrote:

If sellers continue to lie about the reason for cancellation how long do you think it will be before eBay make ANY cancellation a defect regardless if it's the buyer or sellers.

Maybe first they will get more active at confirming these cancellations that are blamed on a buyer problem when they are actually a seller error. I can see a new seller standard coming.....file a bogus buyer related cancellation and get an instant suspension.

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I absolutely agree with what you are saying regarding the honesty expected. 

And the first step is to try to explain this situation to buyer, most of them will take cooperate but once in a while it may not happen.

The steps I have suggested were recommended to me by eBay's CSR when the blocked buyer purchased something from me under newly established identity.

[recped]

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@block36 wrote:

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@recped wrote:

If sellers continue to lie about the reason for cancellation how long do you think it will be before eBay make ANY cancellation a defect regardless if it's the buyer or sellers.

Maybe first they will get more active at confirming these cancellations that are blamed on a buyer problem when they are actually a seller error. I can see a new seller standard coming.....file a bogus buyer related cancellation and get an instant suspension.

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I absolutely agree with what you are saying regarding the honesty expected. 

And the first step is to try to explain this situation to buyer, most of them will take cooperate but once in a while it may not happen.

I don't ask buyers to lie for me and I'd recommend that any seller who thinks they could ask me to lie for them should think again!

The steps I have suggested were recommended to me by eBay's CSR when the blocked buyer purchased something from me under newly established identity.

Totally different situation, cancelling a sale to a buyer who is already on your BBL under a different user id IS a legitimate cancellation.

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[block36]

Your judgment is correct

[gilliankehler]

I recently had a very similar situation except the buyer unfortunately paid before I could cancel. After researching my options, I ended up a) contacting the buyer and explaining the situation, b) opening a cancellation request with the reason being an error in the listing, c) sending refund through Paypal (although i can't remember, maybe the cancellation request kick-started the refund for me?), and after dealing with a very upset customer back and forth for about a week, I finally received my defect and negative feedback, and she received her refund. 😞

Best of luck!