New buyer requests transaction to be cancelled - eBay won’t let me cancel though

[care_bear_pj]

Hi everyone 😄

I’m a little confused over a transaction that was made the other day, as my buyer who is new to eBay wants to cancel the transaction, but I’m having a difficult time doing so.

I sold a single bed quilt cover (item number 201226511830) on the 26/11/2014. The buyer (who is new to eBay and only has feedback left by me) paid for the item and so I created a shipping label for it on eBay and packaged the item to be sent the next day. However, before I sent the item I received a message from the buyer asking if she could pay extra to get the double bed quilt cover. I advised the buyer that the transaction would need to be cancelled first in order for me to refund the transaction and that I required her to click on the buy it now price of the double bed quilt cover that I have listed in order to exchange the size of the quilt cover to ensure she goes through with the transaction and that everything is done by the book on eBay and PayPal. The buyer then messaged me to tell me that she would not click on the buy it now for the double bed quilt cover set as she doesn’t want to be down for both amounts. I just requested that the postage label for the item be voided, but when I try to cancel the transaction, a message appears that says “Unfortunately, we can't cancel your order. You can't cancel this order right now because there's a PayPal case open for it”. I’m assuming this means the buyer has started a PayPal dispute, but for what I do not know, and I haven’t received an email alerting me to any opened PayPal disputes. It’s been 24 hours now and the buyer has not responded to my last message.

I’m very confused! Is anyone able to confirm that the message I received definitely means that the buyer has begun some PayPal dispute? Or how I would go about canceling the transaction? I’m not sure if the buyer is genuine or not and I will not be able to phone eBay during their business hours over the weekend.

Thanks,

Jasmine.

[digital*ghost]

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@care_bear_pj wrote:

I’m very confused! Is anyone able to confirm that the message I received definitely means that the buyer has begun some PayPal dispute? Or how I would go about canceling the transaction? I’m not sure if the buyer is genuine or not and I will not be able to phone eBay during their business hours over the weekend.

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Log in to your PayPal account and locate the transaction, I would think that if a dispute has been opened, there would be a link to go to the resolution centre and view the case details.

It's also possible that the buyer has opened an eBay request instead, which would possible freeze the funds in PayPal but the dispute would be handled via eBay, in which case there's probably an indication on your My eBay page to show that there is an open case.

If a case has been opened, the unfortunate thing is that it means a defect on your account if the buyer has chose a reason like item not as described. If they've opened an eBay case, hopefully you can get the defect removed because the buyer's messages will clearly show that it's a case of buyer's remorse, not to mention you were more than willing to work with them to resolve. 

Edit: Just wanted to add that it's probably better to wait for a few more replies; I haven't had too much experience with eBay's new cancellation process (particularly if a case or request has been initiated), so can't really provide any advice on the best way to proceed with it.

[bradcon02]

i made an exception on the buyer requirements a couple of weeks ago so a new ebay buyer could buy a short,i was in a good mood and explained everything he would need to know and off he went.He placed 3 seperate orders for shorts,only paid for one and then asked me to cancel the others,said they were mistakes.I managed to substitute another type of short he had mentioned got him to pay one invoice and just copped the loss on the third mistake order to avoid cancellations and defects which we get whenever you ask ebay to give back there cut of any order.Then the second short cant be delivered and i have to send a replacement to a different address as he says thats probably because he has moved,the first is still on the way back.Im telling myself this has got to be over soon and this is a tough way to learn my lesson.Then he leaves me a 1 for as descriibed getting a defect because the material isnt the shiny type he likes and the then told me who in England sells the shiny type short he likes.Well i left follow up feedback to my original saying how sorry we were that he wasnt happy as we had tried really hard to make his first ever ebay order a good one - my way of maybe warning others.

If ebay want to put rules on how often a seller can breathe during the day,they wanna make sure sales dont decline any further compared to even a year ago,or they will have no one left to defect.I got smacked in the face for helping a fairly wierd newbie,when i look at the backdated defects and what occured for each one,i honestly have not deserved a single one ,im not critical at .93  its the latest in a texbook case of how to shoot the golden goose. i would show the door immediately to middle anagement,marketing,executive management and the Board .Load a previous version of ebay from about 3 years ago,and find people that know what there doing and hold them responsible for the decisions they make.

                   Sorry  just felt like venting,didnt mean to make people read my rants - Brad 

[cq_tech]

You'll get no thanks for doing buyers favours by cancelling transactions. All you end up with are defects, so no more cancellations from now on. I just put them on my BBL, hit them with a UPI and wait 4 days. Problem solved. I recommend that you do the same.

[clarry100]

We are concerned CQ that if the buyer requests the cancellation and we decline and then let it go to UPI case that the buyer may get cranky and pay up just so they avoid the strike and then leave us a NEG in anger that still gets you a defect that is not removable.

So we make sure we get the buyer to put in writing that they are requesting the cancellation and then cancel citing that as the reason.

We have not been defected for doing this... YET.. nor have we had to argue the toss over such a defect. But if we did get one then it might be easier to have removed than the other way above.

It seems to be mostly newbie buyers who make errors in buying that want to cancel something. And it doesn't happen all too often either.

[cq_tech]

Yeah, that's quite a valid point Clarry. It never occurred to me that somebody would actually pay up just so they could neg you, and I certainly wouldn't trust eBay to resolve the situation by removing it either. Seems that these days we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

[curraone]

I understand completely - it seems that the new buyers are causing sellers so much extra grief since the defect system came in.

In a fair world, ebay would have a compulsory tutorial for new buyers, explaining how feedback and the defect system works - and also make it compulsory to supply an email reference for email contact with the seller before being able to leave negative or neutral.

If they have not emailed the seller to voice their concern and waited x number of days, no bad feedback allowed.

In a fair world......

[cq_tech]

The problem with that is, given that the majority of sellers barely have any idea how the whole convoluted system functions, what chance would a buyer have of even remotely understanding it? Worse still, what makes you think they'd even care? After all, they're not the one copping all the negs and the defects, are they?

[mitty_2010]

Hi there ,  I had the same problem yesterday due to wanting to cancel an order , the same message came up and nope there was no paypal case open for it , I called ebay to see as to why ,the first time I called yesterday around 10am the wait was 55minutes so I hang up and called 2 hours later and I was answered staright away ,  I had to be talked through to do the cancellation manually through the ebay.in for the reason being they are doing upgardes and a new interface for cancellations , so call ebay and  they will  help you .

[care_bear_pj]

Thanks everyone for your replies 🙂 They have been helpful. I'll contact eBay on Monday after work, if I can get ahold of anyone that is haha. It's a shame that problems like this are made so difficult to resolve! I find eBay is getting harder and harder to use as a seller. I remember when both buyers and sellers used to be able to request transactions be cancelled, I'm unsure why eBay changed it to sellers only when it creates these kinds of issues :s

And yes I agree, new buyers should really know the policies before they can start buying on eBay. In saying that I feel I need a refresher course on how to sell because so many policies keep changing hahaha.

Thank you everyone once again 😄