Buyer claims son purchased and paid for item accidentally and now wants to cancel the sale

[glassical-collectables]

Offer made by purchaser on item which was accepted by us and payment was received promptly via PayPal.

Purchaser then contacts us to say his minor son bought and paid for the item accidentally.

I have advised him to contact EBay to request cancellation of the purchase as otherwise we will lose sale fees.  Have also advised him to fully protect and passwoerd his EBay and PayPal accounts so this does not occur again.

I believe the purchase and payment are a binding contract but we are willing to refund in the circumstances as long as it does not cost us money.

Any further help, comments, advice very welcome.

[red_magpie]

This member is 100% responsible for bids which his family members make on his account, with or without his permission.

That said, I think you are wise to agree in principle to a cancellation. Otherwise he may well have "discovered" some fault with the item to justify claiming a full refund. EBay would have supported him, with no questions asked. Smart buyers can always run rings around their sellers' rights on eBay.

The buyer needs to send you a cancellation request, but as they've effectively already done this you can proceed to cancel the sale, see below for the procedure:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/getting-paid/cancel-transaction?id=4136&st=12&pos=4&query=Cancel...

A lot of procedures have changed recently, but if it's still the same you need to select the "cancellation with buyer's agreement" or similar option. This won't count against you, and eBay will refund your final value fee and process the buyer's refund.

It's always important to cancel correctly, as if it appear to eBay that you initiated the cancellation you would forfeit the refund of fees and eBay would penalise you with a defect on your account.