Can a seller initiate a purchase cancellation that doesn't earn a defect notice?

[tazzieterror]

TLDR; My buyer is having trouble requesting a purchase cancellation and asked if I can do it from my end, the options I've found seem to result in a defect on my account - is there a penalty free way?

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A potential buyer contacted me yesterday with some questions about a BIN item I had listed - we went back and forth a few times, and finished with her thanking me and that she'd go away and think about it, but seemed fairly keen.

Today eBay launched their 10% voucher promo, so as a courtesy I messaged the woman again and explained the voucher and how she could use it and would only pay $X dollars instead of the listed amount (I calculated the discounted price for her).

She was very grateful for the tip and wrote back that once the kids were fed and in bed she'd sit down and make the purchase etc.

A moment later, eBay messaged to say that the item had sold, and I got a notifcation from PayPal saying I'd received the funds.

Turns out it was this same woman who'd purchased it, which I thought was a bit strange, until a few minutes later when she messaged saying that after she'd sent the message and was still holding the phone, she'd managed to click on on BIY and as her PayPal details are saved, it's gone ahead and completed the purchase.  Only thing was, she hadn't entered the promo code to get the discount - could I refund her the discount (she even sent me her bank details!)

I politely wrote back and explained that it was eBay providing the discount and I couldn't do anything to get it to her, and explained she'd need to request to cancel the transaction, and then once I'd approved it she'd get refunded and could repurchase with the voucher code.

I gave her rough instructions on how to do this, but she messaged back a little while later saying she couldn't figure it out - could I cancel from my end?

I've looked, but it seems the options available to me to cancel all result in my account receiving a defect notice.  I've written back to her and explained all this, and that she'd need to try again to request the cancellation from her end, and perhaps to contact eBay if she was still having trouble.

Haven't had a reply to that one yet, but I'm wondering if there *is* a way for me to initiate a mutally agreed cancellation, and doesn't defect me?

And I know people regularly get made-up stories from buyers saying "I've accidentally hit buy, can I cancel" etc etc, but I have no reason to not believe this buyer - her questions yesterday were all intelligent and relevant, and her messages polite, so I'm more than happy to try to get the situation fixed for her.

[digital*ghost · Accepted solution]

You should be able to cancel the trasaction without incurring a defect, as long as you don't select the "out of stock" reason for cancelling. 

Out of curiousity, what options are you seeing that indicate you'll receive a defect? Normally you can just click 'cancel transaction' and it takes you to a screen where you need to tick why (buyer asked, problem with address, out of stock), and the only one that ever results in a defect is the out of stock one. 

[tazzieterror]

Ahhh...thanks DG! My options are 1. out of stock/damaged, 2. buyer asked to cancel 3. something wrong with delivery address.

I couldn't find any info to confirm which of these results in a defect...I'll try again. Thanks!

[tazzieterror]

Further to my reply - there was nothing in eBay indicating I'd get a defect - I'd gone searching on the google machine and found some questionable 3rd party info I wasn't sure whether to trust or not, hence posting my question here.

[digital*ghost]

There's probably quite a lot of conflicting info around regarding defects, since eBay used to issue them left, right and centre when they were first introduced, often even in circumstances where they weren't supposed to (it always reminded of this ). 

The two main things now that cause defects are the OOS cancellation, and refunding via PayPal directly, particularly if there's been no communication between buyer and seller (I currently have a defect for issuing a refund of about $8 from a $10 payment [a bit over purchase price of the item] to a buyer who bough several and paid for each one separately - was just trying to make things easier by only sending through one refund for excess postage, but I got a paddlin'  ). 

[tazzieterror]

Yes the info I found was three or four years old I believe, so might have been correct at the time.

All sorted now - refunded the buyer, and they've now repurchased with their discount, so everyone is happy!

Cheers for the Simpson's clip - that's a new one to me! 😄 Gotta love that show.

[egglesdtp]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

The two main things now that cause defects are the OOS cancellation, and refunding via PayPal directly, particularly if there's been no communication between buyer and seller (I currently have a defect for issuing a refund of about $8 from a $10 payment [a bit over purchase price of the item] to a buyer who bough several and paid for each one separately - was just trying to make things easier by only sending through one refund for excess postage, but I got a paddlin'  ). 

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This is a concern - I often refund buyers directly from Paypal who buy multiple items and don't wait for a combined invoice to receive a postage discount. They are always very grateful. Can you expand on your experience?

[lyndal1838]

I think Digi means that she was in trouble because she refunded the excess postage from one transaction which took the refunded amount to more than the actual postage cost on that invoice.  It is a no no to discount the item cost.

[gec2002]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

There's probably quite a lot of conflicting info around regarding defects, since eBay used to issue them left, right and centre when they were first introduced, often even in circumstances where they weren't supposed to (it always reminded of this ). 

The two main things now that cause defects are the OOS cancellation, and refunding via PayPal directly, particularly if there's been no communication between buyer and seller (I currently have a defect for issuing a refund of about $8 from a $10 payment [a bit over purchase price of the item] to a buyer who bough several and paid for each one separately - was just trying to make things easier by only sending through one refund for excess postage, but I got a paddlin'  ). 

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I have had the same issue and I am not sure why eBay have been informed or know, it is essentially a transaction between you and your customer.  If the customer had paid by Credit Card using your Merchant Credit Card facility (I know you may not have one, but work with me here) would the bank disclose to eBay you have made a refund?  I guess a work around is to just transfer the money to the buyer, which I assume leaves you open to paying a full refund on top of what you transferred if the buyer decides to open a case.

[digital*ghost]

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@egglesdtp wrote:

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@digital*ghost wrote:

The two main things now that cause defects are the OOS cancellation, and refunding via PayPal directly, particularly if there's been no communication between buyer and seller (I currently have a defect for issuing a refund of about $8 from a $10 payment [a bit over purchase price of the item] to a buyer who bough several and paid for each one separately - was just trying to make things easier by only sending through one refund for excess postage, but I got a paddlin'  ). 

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This is a concern - I often refund buyers directly from Paypal who buy multiple items and don't wait for a combined invoice to receive a postage discount. They are always very grateful. Can you expand on your experience?

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I've had it happen a couple of times now, it was one of those things I thought to make a point to remember, then forgot to... 

I refund excess postage amounts due to separate payments on a regular basis, sometimes it's one or two a week, other times it's several daily, and the times I've received a defect for doing so is when I have refunded an amount over the purchase price of the item. eg Every now and then someone will buy 5-odd items, and pay full postage on each one from paying separately, so I usually refund as much as I can. If they've bought 5 items I'll generally need to refund about $10, and some of the totals on individual items are less than that. If an item is $6 with $3 postage, and I refund $7 of that payment, I'll get a defect. If I refund $5 of the same payment, I won't get a defect because (I assume) it's under the purchase price and eBay doesn't "think"* I'm refunding for the item, leading them to presume I must be refunding the item price because I'm not sending it (I've put "think" in quotation marks because clearly little thought has gone into it. > But wait...  eBay is obviously on to me -  clearly I'm refunding 70% or so of my buyer's payment, with a note that says "refund for excess shipping", because I'm not going to send it to them, and the buyer isn't even asking for the rest. Score! ).

I try to minimise the actual number of refunds I process because I know PayPal occasionally flag an account if there seems to be a lot of refunds, so if I'm refunding for 4 lots of postage, I'd rather make a single refund than 4, but due to the defects I will usually make 2-3 refunds from multiple purchases instead. 

@gec, I agree - I try to use eBay's cancellation process if I'm doing a full refund for any reason, but partial refunds are a PITA sometimes. It's kind of good that the payment status is updated and the refund amount displayed on eBay, and while I know they wanted to clamp down on sellers listing out of stock items intentionally, the presumption regarding why I've refunded is ridiculous, particularly when I wouldn't even need to do it anywhere near so often if their cart and mobile apps functioned the way they should (9 times out of 10, people who buy and pay spearately are using a mobile app).