Refund Gone Wrong

[travis7s]

Made a big mistake today, looking for advice I guess.

Woke up to a nice sale today, the buyer bought all 3 of the items and the shipping was significantly cheaper than I billed them. I was in a good mood and sent a partial refund for the difference, only I mistakenly refunded the entire amount! (tracking number is created but I still have the items)

My first thought was to just send them a message and a Paypal invoice, but then I was worried that eBay will not like that at all, so I actually called eBay and they advised me to just relist it and get them to buy it again. So I do, and it sells almost immediately, except to a completely different buyer!

The original buyer has not contacted me yet but I assume they will not be happy, and trying to cancel the 2nd buyer seems equally bad, so I'm not really sure what the best thing to do is.

[reallynicestamps]

I would not advise buying a lottery ticket today.

[hlmacdon]

Terrible advice from ebay and why sellers actually need a way to send buyers an invoice rather than offers (thanks CEO). 

[pjcdn2005]

Ouch!

I would provably take the cancellation defect for the second buyer (be honest about what happened and apologize lots) and work something out with the first buyer.  If you did refund through PP you may not have had your fvf refunded so in that case there is nothing wrong with invoicing the buyer through PP as the sale was still done  through eBay.  You might want to contact the first buyer before you do anything with the second buyer.  In this case a phone call might be best and faster.

[reallynicestamps]

Yes, a better idea would have been to send a Paypal invoice with the eBay transaction number attached, showing that it is not an off-eBay sale.

If this ever comes up again, and I dearly hope it won't, relisting with eBay is a possibility, but change the title to the buyer's ID. No one is going to Search for that, probably and the buyer can find it easily.

I've used this successfully for private auctions and for combining lots.

[esclyons]

when i have had a auction listed for a specific buyer, i set the buy it now price, super high,, with best offer enabled, then the buyer sends me an offer for the agreed upon price.  and i accept it.

[esclyons]

and yes i agree with re sending the invoice, explaining that due to a glitch the original amount was refunded. Because even though you did a complete refund the initial transaction would  still be live, as it wasn't a cancelled transaction.. It just required payment to be received again..

[travis7s]

Update:  I look even more foolish.

It looks like the 2nd buyer *is *the original buyer, they used a different ebay account and a different ship to address. This is good because hopefully I won't anger anyone, but my shippo label is no longer correct.

They also mistakenly only order qty 2 items instead of 3, and then just chose "local pickup" for the last item so my shipping charges are still going to be out, but I think I'll just eat the loss on it.

The listing may be cursed...

[esclyons]

looks like they bought 2, and then bought the other 1, hope it all works out for you.. 

You are going to need to call ebay, and explain, what actually happened, otherwise you are going to pay double selling fees, for selling the same items twice. whomever advised you to relist and sell again wasn't interested in checking the correct way to do things.. So you will have 2 sets of final fees for the same item you sold twice..

I would call , and explain what happened, and see if they can give you a credit for the extra set of fees..

[travis7s]

Everthing seems fine now, package is going to a verified address, buyer seems happy, and ebay credited the inital FVF. Thanks to everyone for the advice.