My son bought an item and paid straight away, pending refund query now

[musdeco]

My son bought an item on his own Ebay account but his girlfriend paid for it using her bank card, there is nothing wrong at this stage. But at the same time as she paid the seller messaged my son to say the item had already been sold on another platform and was no longer available. He immediatly refunded the money. Now this is where it goes pear shaped, so please bear in mind the initial payment was by card. The seller refunded the payment to my sons Ebay account. He admitted that he had made a mistake in doing it this way without following correct proceedures. So for the past 2 weeks the refund has been sitting in limbo and marked as "refund pending". The seller says it can take up to 30 days to get through the pending stage (which I dispute) anyway, my son has got fed up waiting and opened an INR case just in case the "refund pending" fails. The seller is now worried that he may end up refunding twice. My son has told the seller he will refund one ammount if 2 refunds are received, which is fair enough. My question is a: does a refund pending usually take this long? and b: What is the proper way to refund the 2nd refund if that does happen? Any suggestions would be welcome

[rusticrye · Accepted solution]

Who actually paid is irrelevant. Payment refunds always go back to payment source - so, in this instance, to the account your son's girlfriend used to pay.

Refunds are not instant. If payment was made by debit card, it will take up to 7 days to clear into a bank account. If by credit card, it can take up to 30 days to appear on a cc statement, depending on the billing cycle. These are the banking industry norms, and have nothing to do with Ebay or PayPal or the seller.

Bear in mind too that the girlfriend's payment will first have to clear before the refund process can begin.  Payments that haven't yet cleared, which this one couldn't have done due to the seller's quick action, obviously can't be refunded until they do.

@musdeco 

[angelah1847]

A seller cannot refund to a buyer's ebay account, that isn't possible.

Even though the original payment was made by card (it doesn't matter whose) it will have been processed by Paypal so that it would end up in the seller's Paypal account.

A refund would go back to the funding source and if that's to a card then there can be a delay.

Provided the seller initiated the refund directly from the buyer's payment in their Paypal account then the buyer cannot be refunded twice.

[musdeco]

Thank you for reply, I can see the way the refund would be refunded that is back to the buyers card account by Paypal, How long could it reasonably be expected to take? In this day of fast processing surely up to 30 days is not reasonable. On my second question about being refunded twice, although you say the refund cannot happen twice it raises the question of why eBay have allowed a case to be opened now after 2 weeks for IRN what are they likely to do if and when my son escalates the case if the refund is still pending?