Sometimes it pays to pick up the phone

[ricarmic]

Pre phone call:

-Got an ebay preapproved return request, buyer says they changed their mind they wanted a different lot than the one they purchased and apologized in the message in the return request.

-A few minutes later they purchased a larger lot, presumably the one they meant

-A couple minutes later I got a "return" message saying that they didn't want the bigger lot they wanted the original smaller lot????

At this point I'm totally confused so I immediately send an ebay message to the the buyer and wait. No response for many hours so I decide to call.

During the call I discover the item was only mailed to them 1 business day before, so they didn't even have it yet (I didn't think to check that before the call).

They were new to internet/ebay (I'm presuming they're somewhat older than me) and were learning how to use it. They'd also forgotten their password in the meantime so hadn't seen my ebay messages.

We worked out what they really wanted, and what needed to happen to clean things up in about 5 minutes on the phone.

Fortunately I was able to cancel the 2nd purchase from my side, they've not cancelled the erroneous original return but I told them if they couldn't figure out how just to leave it, it would eventually expire and disappear on its own.

I did get an ebay message today responding to the original ebay message I sent before the call so they must have figured out their password, but I think they didn't realize I sent the message before we talked. I simply replied refreshing the phone conversation information from the night before.

Thank goodness I called, that saved likely many hours of further confusing back and forth messages....hopefully.... if not I'll call them again.

[ricarmic]

As an addendum, today I got an ebay message that seemed to say I had to do something (see it at the end) about the never to be returned item.

When I went in, the only thing I could do is refund. 

I thought that these unreturned returns just died on their own but I was concerned that some automagic process would refund the buyer on the 13th (January 13th is when the original refund was put in so this is the 30 day expiry), so I called it in. The CSR killed it off for me, but they did confirm that if I simply ignored the message the return would automagically drop after the 13th without refunding.

==Message received today (unHTML'd) ====

We've asked the buyer to send the item

Hi Ron,

BUYERNAME indicated that they posted their return. The item should now be delivered and once you've received it, please issue the buyer with a refund by Feb 13, 2020.

When the refund is complete, you'll automatically receive a credit for the final value fee and other applicable fees.

If the item hasn't arrived yet, the buyer may not be returning it. if you like, you can contact buyer. If you can't reach a resolution, you can ask us to step in and help.

[pjcdn2005]

I’ve received a couple of those messages in the past and they are confusing because the dashboard wasn’t showing that the buyer had sent the item back.  Eventually the returns did close on their own.