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.

[john1297576]

It will cost you, it is impossible to win as paypal fees are not refundable.

It is not worth trying to withhold these fees from a refund, it would need the "buyers" agreement to do this. 

I suspect it is just a excuse, I have seen bids like this blamed on the cat, a very intelligent cat to bid and pay!! A decent buyer would pay up and sell on themselves.

Add this buyer to your Blocked Bidders LIst, you can do without this sort of buyer

[rusticrye]

Ebay won't cancel the order - order cancellations have to be made by the seller.  All Ebay will do is point the buyer back in your direction.

As a private seller clearing your home of your no-longer-wanted possessions, you could certainly refuse the cancellation request, but it will cost you even more, as I can almost guarantee that the buyer will claim not-as-described on receipt, which will force you to pay for the return.  And you can't withold any part of the buyer's original payment when you refund, as refunds have to be made in full - it's the law.

Cancellation and return requests are very rare, but you can cover yourself by 'self-insuring' if you like. You do this by adding a few pennies on to your item and/or postage prices, and by chucking those few pennies into a jar each time you make a sale.

@glassical-collectables 

[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.