Not full refund

[browniebeckie]

I bought a bike for the asking price and it turned out the bike wasn’t for sale as it had already been sold! I asked for a refund but did not get all my money back. I know there are eBay fees but this seems totally unfair that I should lose out when I was not at fault in any way whatsoever! All I did was innocently buy a listed item which turned out not to be available anymore! 

[jckl1957]

You should have got everything back that you paid.

The seller should refund everything they received and Ebay then refund the Buyer Protection Fee.

How much did you pay and how much have you received back?

[red_magpie]

I asked for a refund

But HOW did you  claim a refund? It's so hard to help if all you tell us is that you "asked for a refund". If you followed eBay's dispute resolution procedure correctly you should have received a full refund. As you haven't it sounds as though you may have tried to negotiate a refund privately with the seller.

If you haven't done so already, may I suggest that you start by  familiarisng yourself with eBay's money back guarantee: https://pages.ebay.co.uk/ebay-money-back-guarantee/

Then, if you can explain exactly what you have done so far - and it's not already beyond eBay's 30 day time limit to open a case - we may be better able to advise you what can still be done.

If already beyond eBay's the time limit you can check whether your payment provider may still be able to help.

[browniebeckie]

Thanks for this. I didn’t negotiate with the seller. In fact I couldn’t get them to reply to my messages (as they weren’t aware they had a listing, they were not checking their messages). I went through the eBay official cancellation procedure. One of the things I had to do was click on a ‘reason for cancellation’ but as my reason (item not actually available for sale) was not an option, and there was not option of ‘other’ I had to click on something random like ‘item not as described’. That was obviously not the reason for my refund but I had to click on SOMETHING in order to continue the process. Then I managed to reach the seller by spotting a phone number on a van in the corner of a photo for something else they were selling and I got them to check their eBay account and accept my refund. I know I only lost £20 but I felt that this was unfair and I felt hard-done-by that the cancellation procedure didn’t give me the opportunity to click on the real reason for my refund. 

[papso22]

If the seller was unwilling to initiate the cancellation themselves then you should have used the money back guarantee and opened a case for item not received, you have to wait a few days after purchase to do that.

You should still get a full refund eventually but ebay takes a little time to refund what you paid to them such as the buyer protection fee and any postage.