Ebay refunded postage cost on something I bought and received about 2 months ago

[skiath_4718]

Hi I received a confusing message from ebay in which Ebay have refunded the postage cost on something I bought and received about 2 months ago.  It says;

"We issued you a refund for the postage cost of this order.

When you purchased, you paid for the postage.  The postage label wasn't used so we're refunding the postage cost to you"

I'm confused by this as the seller did send the item to me, and there was no issues, no returns or refunds etc.

I was planning on selling some items on ebay at some point but this puts me off a bit as it seems to be that if you don't use ebay's own label system, then the buyer gets their postage fee back?  Is that correct? 

[papso22]

That sounds as if the seller listed using Simple Delivery and then didn't use the label you had paid for and instead bought another one.

With SD the buyer effectively buys the label from ebay, so if the label is not used it appears ebay refunds the cost.  

It's not something I have heard of before though.

If, as a seller, you don't use SD then the buyer pays you for the postage and you buy the label yourself, no refunds unless the seller initiates one.

[easycoy506]

I had the same yesterday and not a clue whats going on.

[skiath_4718]

Thanks for clarifying.  I'll just select my own custom postage then when I get around to listing some items.

Still no idea though why I got refunded.  I'd like to know if the seller knows as he's basically out of pocket now for no good reason.  The only thing I can think is maybe he had a promo offer on his account whereby ebay were offering sellers a free Simple Delivery/ rebate, perhaps it was claimed by the seller but ebay's system has noticed it wasn't used so they've clawed the money back