Summer 2018 update-- Partial refunds

[reallynicestamps]

I'm not too bothered by the category regrouping that others are discussing in detail, but this caught my eye.

Partial refunds

As we announced in our Spring Seller Update, when you offer free returns, you can decide to issue partial refunds to buyers when the item is returned in an altered condition. We have created a new Condition of Return policy to educate buyers that the returned item must be in the same condition in which it was received.

If you do not offer free returns, you will still be able to issue a partial refund for items returned in an altered condition in select categories

My question is -- what standard will eBay set for proving that the buyer returned the  doohickey in 'altered condition"?

The seller's word?

The buyer's admission?

Photos?

It is also unclear if International Returns can be split into USA and overseas.

I don't think Canadian sellers would be more than extremely annoyed to pay for USPS return shipping labels, now that we can through Shippo. After all, sometimes the seller is wrong (not often of course).

But having overseas buyers forced to pay return shipping would be a relief.

Then looking at this from the viewpoint of the Canadian buyer, dealing with an overseas seller of garbage..... well.... that's another story.

[recped]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

I'm not too bothered by the category regrouping that others are discussing in detail, but this caught my eye.

Partial refunds

As we announced in our Spring Seller Update, when you offer free returns, you can decide to issue partial refunds to buyers when the item is returned in an altered condition. We have created a new Condition of Return policy to educate buyers that the returned item must be in the same condition in which it was received.

If you do not offer free returns, you will still be able to issue a partial refund for items returned in an altered condition in select categories

My question is -- what standard will eBay set for proving that the buyer returned the  doohickey in 'altered condition"?

The seller's word?

The buyer's admission?

Photos?

It is also unclear if International Returns can be split into USA and overseas.

I don't think Canadian sellers would be more than extremely annoyed to pay for USPS return shipping labels, now that we can through Shippo. After all, sometimes the seller is wrong (not often of course).

But having overseas buyers forced to pay return shipping would be a relief.

Then looking at this from the viewpoint of the Canadian buyer, dealing with an overseas seller of garbage..... well.... that's another story.

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This new thing doesn't affect me at all so I'm not concerned.

As far as the returns, I do believe you can have (US Sellers) one return policy for Domestic and a different one for International at least as far as who pays return shipping for remorse returns.

I don't know if something similar is available for Canadian sellers or if we can only have one for Domestic (Canada) and one for the ROW.

As for the ability to deduct partial amounts for returns not in the original condition......sounds like a hot mess to me, sellers would abuse it and that would leave eBay to decide and then we are right back to the buyers word vs sellers word and we know how that turns out.

[reallynicestamps]

Fortunately it has come up only once in the past several years, although that was recently.

I sent a Shippo USPS return shipping label, the scammer buyer did not use it, and I won the Dispute.

So I risked $10, covered by Cookie Jar Insurance.

But if the buyer had been in France, I'd be risking about $35 even for less than 100 grams (Tracked Packet).

So I would like to see the ability to set different policies for USA and for overseas.

And yeah, 'altered condition' will be a boiling hot mess.

[momcqueen]

I participated in an early webinar about Returns. There needs to be clarification on the ‘altered state’ criteria for sure but they told me at that time there was currently NO WAY to differentiate between offering free returns to domestic versus international etc. it would be good if there were. Domestic shipping for a Return would cost me $10 to $26 but international is $11.55 to $30. Well. Hmm. That’s hardly any difference. Not that it would convince me to offer Free Returns anyway.

[pjcdn2005]

According tio the update there will be a way to differentiate whether you offer free buyers remorse returns to just domestic buyers or all buyers. I agree with Femme/stamps that it would be nice if we had the option of offering free returns to the US without having to offer it to other international buyers but I don’t think it will be set up that way on .ca.   But like you, I don’t plan on offering free returns anyway.

Where are you getting the $11.55-$30 cost for international returns?  It would really depend on where it was being shipped from, we can’t base it on what we paid to ship it there. 

[momcqueen]

“Where are you getting the $11.55-$30 cost for international returns? It would really depend on where it was being shipped from, we can’t base it on what we paid to ship it there.”

This is my cost to ship to USA versus Europe via Tracked Packet but, you’re right. It costs Australians to ship to us about 60 per cent of what it costs to ship to them in my testing.

[rose-dee]

Oh, I can just imagine the fiasco already over this one.  Sellers deciding to break things and take lovely pictures of the damage so they can justify a partial, rather than full refund.   And what about more subtle definitions of "altered condition", like clothing that was tried on by someone who loves to wear disgustingly heavy perfume that clings to everything.  How do you sort that one out? 

Yikes, talk about pitting buyers and sellers against each other.  This is one of the stupidest ideas eBay has come up with (not that that is a novel experience). 

[momcqueen]

It won't put buyer against seller. ebay will fund the Return in that 'altered state leads to partial refund' case, according to the data as I understood it from the webinar I mentioned and also posted about afterwards. It doesn't cost the seller anything. The issue then becomes seller and ebay to work-out or ebay and buyer to work-out depending on which parties ebay decides might make the most superfluous claims. 

[momcqueen]

My report on that webinar. I decided to share a report at the time because it seemed obvious that 60-day returns and changes to the Returns policy were coming with an upcoming Seller Update. 

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Managing-Returns-webinar-and-60-day-FREE-Returns/m-p/394...