Difficult Seller Refusing to Refund

[belle-lolita]

So this should have been relatively simple and straight forward to do, but apparently not. The time goes as follows;

November (end): bought item for £10 free P&P.

Sunday: Messaged the seller and requested a return, stating I would be posting it by Monday afternoon as I had found the item for a better price. My fault for simply requesting via purchase history and not noting on the listing itself that the seller did not take refunds.

Monday: posted the item as promised. Still no reply from seller.

Wednesday: get an alert that seller has closed the return saying "Sorry, don't do returns. Enjoy the item!" to which I reply that unfortunately I had already posted it back, and would be grateful to know when she got it back.

Saturday: Seller says she has recieved the item. Says she will refund me £6.90 as she had to pay £3.10 in posting the item to me. 

                 I kindly explain that she had offered free postage and as a seller she is obligated to refund me the full amount of the item, which it £10.00 and that the postage cost is void because she had offered free postage. I had paid to return it to her, which means after all expenses, I am still out about £7.00 for an item I don't even have anymore.

She told me that was my problem, she's not obliged to do ANYTHING and that I should be grateful she's even refunding me any money at all considering she has it listed on her item that she doesn't do returns. 

It's the principle of the matter at hand, not necessarily the money. It clearly states in the sellers guidelines and agreements that, unless the item was returned used, damaged, or faulty, there are no grounds to deducting additional costs from the full refund price.

Saturday: Find out seller has relisted the same item I had returned for an even higher price than what I had paid for it.

As there are no direct emails or phone numbers for eBay I just wanted to get a feel for what other options I had. I'm going to try and call them up tomorrow evening, however I have a feeling I may just get shrugged off. Paypal is also useless, either taking me back to eBay's resolution centre (which is not an option as she closed the dispute) or to eBay's appeal page (which for some reason doesn't let you appeal anything, especially closed cases, which defeats the entire point of appealing.)

[papso22]

This thread could have been from the seller and called:

Difficult buyer ignored my no returns policy, returned an item because they changed their mind and now demands a full refund.  I have offered to refund their payment less my postage cost to get it to them, is that fair?

To which my answer would have been, yes, that's fair as you should not be out of pocket for the buyer's mistake.  EBay's money back guarantee and consumer law don't apply here.