ebay policy

[bytech]

Selling via ebay is not protected
The buyer doesn't return the item, he just says it's damaged
buyer outside the ebay needs refund policy .ebay is not helpful

[*guinevere*]

You never issue a refund until you have the item back in your possession.

Your buyer must open a not as described case and you provide a label, then you refund when you get the item back.

If your buyer refuses to return it you do not have to refund,

[m25jet]

You haven't refunded the buyer before getting the item back, have you?  If you have then you can kiss goodbye to any chances of getting the item back again.  If the buyer was making false allegations that the item was damaged but had run out of time to open a case then you shouldn't have refunded him/her in the first place.  That way the buyer would still have the item, damaged or not, and you'd still have your money from the transaction.  Only refund a buyer once you have received the item back again - if the buyer fails to comply with that request, despite your having issued him/her with an eBay Returns label to post the item back again then you do not have to provide the buyer with a refund.

You most certainly do not have to issue a refund if the buyer has left it so long to raise a complaint about the item that he/she is out of time to open an eBay case against you; however, a buyer has one hundred and twenty days to do a chargeback against you and one hundred and eighty days to open a PayPal case against you, so until one hundred and eighty days have passed you would not be able to completely relax and think "Right - the buyer's way out of time to open a case now, so I don't need to issue a refund at all."