Item arrived damage - what’s the best course of action?

[trash2treasure88]

Does anyone know, what’s the best way to go about this, please? The buyer received the item damaged.

1. Should I let her open a return case or should I just refund her right away without opening a return case. I don’t want the item back as I can no longer use/sell it.

2. Will the return case affect my seller performance even if I will refund her without having to return the item or it doesn’t as long as I will resolve it?

3.  Also as I understand it, I can claim compensation from Packlink. I shipped the item through Inpost. Anyone has success with their claims? I packaged the item well with lots of protection so even the buyer was suprised how it got broken with the way I packed it. I got photos for every step of packaging I did. Thanks in advance for your your advice.

[**peaseblossom**]

If you used Simple Delivery on the listing in theory you are protected if the item is damaged from the point the item is scanned into the carrier's delivery network and until it's marked as delivered.    That means ebay should pay the refund, not you.   I'm not sure how exactly that works.   You could contact ebay and ask them how to proceed.  You can use callback on here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/eua?id=5275&mkevt=1&mkpid

If you didn't use SD you can just issue a refund if you don't want the item back, via the dropdown menu arrow for the item on your orders list.    But a return case won't affect your account as long as you resolve it.

@trash2treasure88