Change to how postage refunds are processed or is it me?
Summary: bzmotman shared concerns about a German customer who paid for 19 auction items separately, leading to a postage charge issue. Despite marking the refund as a postage discount, eBay split it between purchase price and postage. This raised worries about the impact on customs data sent to Royal Mail, especially with items from multiple countries of origin. fullers_uk mentioned potential issues with order cancellation and packaging regulations in Germany, while tommystrezures noted that this refund issue has been ongoing and suggested using direct postage from Royal Mail to avoid complications.
Had a regular German customer buy 19 auction items and then immediately pay without waiting for a combined invoice resulting in a postage charge of £100. Not a problem just process the appropriate postage refund but when I did this Ebay decided to split the refund between purchase price & postage despite me describing it as Postage discount. I don't use GSP and am on contract with Royal Mail.
Very rare to have to do refunds like this for overseas buyers but I had always thought that it appeared as purely a postage refund. I tried doing as both an order level refund & individually against each item but the result was the same. The big issue for me is the Customs data that Ebay send to Royal Mail. Will the refund be reflected in the data or not? Am I going to be sending an item out with incorrect data because of Ebay? To add to it the 19 items were across 7 different Country of Origins so unless Ebay tell me what refund has been made to each purchase price it is impossible to combine them on the CN23.
Anyone else experienced this or have any ideas. kat@ebay can you provide any guidance?
Post created at 10.45 August 20th
tommystrezures
·3 weeks agoThe refund scenario you describe is how they have annoyingly done it for sometime now eg bits are apportioned here and there without rhyme or reason.
IF you bought the postage direct from Royal Mail or over the counter at the post office you wouldn't have this problem as you would declare a value XYZ and that would be it (plus all the silly fees for DDP etc eg €3.00 plus handling fee for each order line).
bzmotman
OP3 weeks agoWhy should I go into the Post Office when I have a RM Business account & contract giving me much better rates than retail prices. Also surely I would still need to have 7 different lines on the CN23 for each different COO so would need to know the Ebay determined purchase price or am I misunderstanding your comment?
fullers_uk
·3 weeks agoThink once its been submitted thats it because you cant claim it back if you cancel the order, also are you registered for the packaging recycling regs in Germany if not the shipment may be refused entry.
bzmotman
OP3 weeks agoBeen registered since LUCID started. Send numerous Tracked & untracked to Germany every week.
Can you explain "you can't claim it back if you cancel the order". Why should that make them split the refund between Purchase price & postage?