Buyer refused to pay customs and gets a refund?

[thirdchoicekit02]

Hi all! I sold a football shirt bundle to Germany last month (from the UK) and once it arrived at customs, the buyer tried pulling out of the deal because I wasn’t paying the €180 charge. I informed him that it was his responsibility to pay customs as the buyer and as I have no returns applied to my listings, failure to pay may disqualify his money back guarantee. This led to him stating that he would not pay customs and wait for the item to be returned to sender before submitting a refund request.

The other day, he did so and eBay sided in his favour and have now granted him a refund under ‘item not received’ despite clear admittance in our messages that he was returning due to the customs charge and the tracking stating the same. I’ve been on the phone with eBay support and was told ‘the tracking shows delivered’ and therefore I’ll receive a message from Germany’s eBay support within 5 days (?).

I’ll obviously be filing an appeal but I’m hoping some of you may have some advice on how to best put my argument forward, as it seems the evidence is not well checked.

Thanks!

[thirdchoicekit02]

UPDATE:

Okay so apparently the call counted as an appeal, or maybe an appeal was submitted by the support team. Either way, it was found in my favour. Thanks to any future potential responders anyway! 🙂

[papso22]

Excellent outcome, as you are aware, refusing to pay customs charges removes a buyer from the protection of the money back guarantee.  Out of interest, did you bring that to ebay's attention when the buyer opened their case?

[thirdchoicekit02]

The case moved too quick for me to make them aware before I called. 

The buyer submitted the item not received claim on the 27th to which I updated the tracking information as I didn’t see the option to refund or message the buyer appropriate considering he was already made aware of his loss of the money back guarantee should he refuse customs.

Yesterday, he asked for eBay to step in as ‘the item still hasn’t arrived and the seller isn’t responding’ to which they sided with him around an hour later as ‘the parcel has not been delivered to the buyer’s address’.

This morning I called and simply stated that the buyer refused to pay customs and affectively refused collection which is why the parcel couldn’t make it to the buyer’s address and that there was no more I could do in the matter. Again, about an hour later I was told my appeal was granted and the refund is revoked.

[tressygirl]

Thankfully you had a CS agent who knew eBay's rules that is, don't pay custom duties and you negate eBay's 30 day MBG protection.

The agent  acted correctly, swiftly too,  great result !

@thirdchoicekit02