buyer not collected

[8474s1]

I waited over 2 weeks for buyer to collect, they had arranged the collection date but didn't turn up. I emailed 4 times over the 2 weeks and gave a deadline to collect in the end.

I have never had this before, they had paid by paypal so I just went on there and refunded them last night (didn't do it through ebay first!) then cancelled it on ebay afterwards (used the address not correct option as didn't know what else to use).

But now ebay are asking me to refund (big red capital letters) so how do they see it has been done? I am not sure this buyer will confirm the refund as they haven't replied to any of the emails I have sent. They have however been continuing to purchase on ebay as they have recent feedback from other sellers so they are not ill with the virus or too unwell to respond if they wanted too. I just don't want a negative record against me. 

Has anyone lease had this situation and how do you ensure ebay see you have refunded? Thanks 

[rusticrye]

England is in lockdown, with most of the country about to go into draconian tiers, so I'm not suprised the buyer isn't collecting. (I am surprised, though, that anyone is listing items for collection at this time. ) Or he may be ill, had an accident. or even have died. Who knows.

Whatever, you should have cancelled the Ebay transaction ('problem with buyer's address') from your SOLD page. That would have auto-refunded the buyer, and credited the selling fee back to your Ebay account. You would then have been free to relist without the risk of getting two buyers for the same item. (By the way, note that you have only 32 days from purchase in which to cancel an Ebay transaction, so never wait longer than that for a collection to take place).

If you refunded from the PayPal transaction itself, the buyer can't be refunded twice.  But if you simply sent the buyer a PayPal payment, you're in trouble as it will obviously not be connected to the transaction in any way.

Last but not least, never accept PayPal for a collection item. It is not safe. Accept only cash or bank transfer, once the buyer has fully examined the item and is happy with it.

@8474s1 

[8474s1]

Thank you so much for all replies. I have not encountered this situation before. I did try to list it as cash on collection only, but when I tried to make the advert live I had to add the PayPal option too? But did leave in the copy please pay on collection, not PayPal. It's been listed for a while so before we went into lockdown again or I would not have listed it as that at the moment.
I refunded against the sale on PayPal rather than just sending him a payment as such. Maybe that helps? Realise now I did it all wrong! The person lives less than 2 miles from me as I can see their address and they have feedback from other sellers in the last week so are active and could have replied to any of the 4 messages I sent.
I did keep it for him for nearly 3 weeks without any correspondence back from him at all (I did say completely understand in this climate things may have changed etc as aware he could have been in isolation or worse).
I will have to wait and see if he chooses to acknowledge it has been refunded to him, which is what ebay obviously need, as I can't see what else I can do now.
Again thanks for comments

[*knight-rider*]

`England is in lockdown, with most of the country about to go into draconian tiers, so I'm not suprised the buyer isn't collecting`

that maybe the case, but it would`nt hurt them to send the seller a message to either apologise, make different arrangements or something, rather than simply ignore people! i suspect the lack of comms is nothing to do with lockdown and more likely they`ve changed their mind.

[red_magpie]

The bad news is that if you refunded them direct - presumably through PayPal? - and then cancelled the sale through eBay's resolution centre, you may end up refunding them twice. EBay's refund process will not take account of any payments made privately.

You can try phoning eBay customer support - be patient, it can be very difficult to get through at the moment.

For the future, it's important to make all refunds through the resolution centre. You also need to be careful when selecting the reason you give for the refund. Unless your buyer has agreed to it, you may receive a defect on your account from making a seller-initiated cancellation. You would also forfeit the return of your selling fee.

In future, always try to get payment in cash when selling items for collection. The difficulty for sellers in making a penalty-free refund when a buyer doesn't collect an item, plus the changes to eBay's money back guarantee (which now allows buyers to claim a refund up to 30 days after collection - with the seller possibly even being made responsible for the cost of return) are a real deterrent to selling anything for collection on eBay. Not to mention the long-standing and well known scam by which a buyer can pay by PayPal and later engineer a fraudulent chargeback to keep both the item and the money.