eBay

ducatimondo · ‎02-01-2024

We are all for being right and straight with the world and do not mind one iota if a buyer changes their mind and returns an item.

I am sure there will be a few of us in this boat, just after Christmas, where buyer's have left it till the last minute to place orders for Christmas gifts.

We try to please all and certainly satisfy the requirement for TRS and Premium Service, et al.

So when a buyer places an order a couple of days to Christmas and asks us for help, then orders next day delivery with DPD, then that is fine.
When they then come to return the item, eBay seems to make us obligated to refund the upgraded postage too...

This is unfortunately not how it is supposed to work.

The item is a low value item, just under £12

The additional postage paid was £6.99 to upgrade to DPD next day. But they are in Northern Ireland, so that service was not available through Packlink and also would not have been a next day service even if it was.
So we took the hit and paid the extra to send it with Royal Mail Special Delivery, costing about £10, on an order now total about £18.50 including the upgraded delivery.

The item did arrive before Christmas, but we got no thank you for that. What we did get instead was a quickly opened a return request when it arrived, as they just did not like the item.

That is also fine if they do not like it. They also returned it quickly and it was delivered today.

We went to process a refund for the return, but the eBay system will not even let us deduct the £6.99 extra paid for the shipping upgrade as that is more than 50% of the item cost??

It is not more than 50% of the transaction though is it?

It is also well within our statutory rights to not refund upgraded postage on a remorse return.

So we are left in a predicament, that we can either just loose out and refund the full amount, well more than we are obligated to, or we can loose out by doing nothing, then eBay will automatically refund the full amount too, again more than we are obligated to.

How are we supposed to provide a refund for their return and knock off the additional postage paid?
Does anyone know and I am just being a bit thick?
Or is there genuinely no way to do it as the platform has not bothered to make this possible?
Does the platform think it is okay to expect sellers to just throw away £10 notes like it doesn't matter?

Why is it that this self claimed leader in eCommerce can't get basic things like this right??

marco@ebay
dave@ebay
katie@ebay
anita@ebay

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

4_bathrooms · ‎02-01-2024

@ducatimondo wrote:

When they then come to return the item, eBay seems to make us obligated to refund the upgraded postage too...
This is unfortunately not how it is supposed to work.

It is how it works on eBay.

@ducatimondo wrote:

We went to process a refund for the return, but the eBay system will not even let us deduct the £6.99 extra paid for the shipping upgrade as that is more than 50% of the item cost??

None of the reasons eBay specify for adjusting a refund mention recovering enhanced outgoing postage. In fact, eBay state:

"Misuse of this protection

Sellers may only deduct an amount from the buyer's refund in order to recover lost value when an item is returned used, altered or damaged. Sellers may not use this protection to recoup market losses on items returned in the same condition or recoup return postage and/or restocking costs."

@ducatimondo wrote:

It is also well within our statutory rights to not refund upgraded postage on a remorse return.

Your buyer has statutory rights. A business seller can't diminish a buyer's statutory rights but they can offer a buyer more rights than they have enshrined in law. That's exactly what happens when you sell via eBay; you give every buyer the right to a full refund of the outgoing postage/shipping costs including where the buyer chose to pay extra for an enhanced service.

For what it's worth I do believe eBay should rethink this. I often don't bother offering enhanced shipping services on my listings as a result; for larger items it simply isn't worth it if the buyer changes their mind. For some palletised items that would mean losing £60-ish because the buyer looked at the wrong side of the tape measure when they took their original measurements.

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

andybrussell · ‎02-01-2024

We have found this too in the past.

An item bought for say £5 the buyer pays for Special Delivery which they pay £7. If they then change their mind we can not deduct the upgraded postage costs.

The other whammy is if you issue anything less than a full refund then eBay do not refund the fees so you pay the fees on the origional transaction value with non of it being refunded.

So even if we could deduct the £7 for the postage upgrade eBay have still charged their fees on the £12 total the buyer paid and do not refund back the proportion of the refund so we loose out either way.