Ebay/Paypal making me refund twice.

[shawn10240]

See if you guys can get this logic because Ebay/Paypal are having a hard time.

Sold item for $75

$72.75 went into my Paypal account.

Withdrew $72.75 into bank account.

Item was faulty so buyer requests a refund

Paypal balance goes negative.

I sell another auction which takes $19.18 off the negative balance

I deposit $53.57 via credit card to get my balance out of negative and back to 0.00.

I get item back and buyer is refunded, feedback left, case closed.

Ebay sends me an email stating i owe them $75 and it will be withdrawn in 10 days from my automatic payment method.

So the $72.75 that i paid to get my Paypal account back to 0.00 and out of negative has vanished?

[lyndal1838]

Just phone paypal and point out that your account does not have a negative balance.

Mistakes happen.

[shawn10240]

Oh believe me i have tried, Paypal can't understand my issue.

They can even see the $53.57 i deposited today and they have no answer when i ask if eBay themselves refunded the buyer and are charging me in 10 days what happened to that money.

Ebay said the email might be a mistake but i confirmed it's not by trying to remove my automatic payment method and it telling me a transaction is active on the account.

[the_dutchess_of_dork]

Hi Shawn,

You didn't by any chance refund directly from PayPal before going through the official ebay refund request, did you?

I had a similar experience in November.  Someone opened a Refund Request for a partial refund.  As I hadn't had one before I refunded directly from PayPal.  Then I went into the ebay case, confirming I was refunding.  When the case was closed, ebay effectively refunded again because it must be part of the process.  Admittedly my mistake as I should have looked into the process before issuing the refund.

However, I immediately called both ebay and PayPal because the second payment was "pending" in PayPal and there were clearly two refunds for the same amount, same item, same buyer within a few minutes of each other.

Neither ebay nor PayPal would do anything about it and both suggested I contact the buyer and ask her to reimburse me for the second refund when it cleared.  I did so and she promised to reimburse me.  Needless to say, she didn't.  I contacted her as soon as I saw the second cleared refund but she never responded.  I was pretty disappointed because I had not only refunded immediately with no questions asked but also allowed her to keep the item.

When I had asked PayPal to stop the second refund, they had the audacity to tell me not intervening was for my benefit.  I understand if I had been trying to stop a payment it may have been suss as I could be trying to get the item for free but I fail to see how stopping a refund could be seen in the same light.  Presumably if I had been attempting something dishonest, the buyer could have easily proved they never received the refund.

I'm not sure if your situation is the same but thought I would respond anyway.

[digital*ghost]

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@shawn10240 wrote:

Ebay said the email might be a mistake but i confirmed it's not by trying to remove my automatic payment method and it telling me a transaction is active on the account.

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Do you have any outstanding selling fees? They also might not let you remove it because the other transaction is considered 'active" until it passes the timeframe where it's eligible for a request. 

This does sound like an ebay issue, though. If the account had a negative balance, maybe ebay don't consider the refund to be funded by you until the balance clears. 

i would be trying to sort it out with ebay, though, and try to keep things as simple as possible - buyer has the funds from your PayPal account, no money is owed to eBay.