@*tippy*toes* wrote:
You should have acted on the dispute before the buyer had the option to ask eBay to step in and help. Once they ask eBay to step in and help, the dispute closes and they get a full refund without having to return the item. You will also have scored a defect as well.
Not necesarily, I recently had a customer get ebay to step in (ahead of schedule too, by calling them) and ebay made the customer send the item back at the customers expense anyway.
Basically, they agreed with us and ruled it a change of mind return. No defect or other penalty, and when the customer left negative feedback, they removed it.
How? Because we attempted several different tacks to satisfy the customer, including offering them a few bucks to send the item back before they even opened the refund request. They demanded more money to return it.
We also used ebay's report a buyer option long before they even rang ebay and basically suggested that they did not seem to be negotiating in good faith, and posing the question of whether they have pulled similar stunts with other sellers.
We also uploaded screenshots of the communications from before the refund was opened to show that we clearly had tried to come to a reasonable compromise.
