ebay fees-any chance of any refund in these circumstances?

[springyzone]

A friend of mine recently sold an item. Unfortunately it had a fault in it that she had not noticed and once the buyer let her know, she agreed to a full refund, including all postage costs.

The buyer is posting it back.

My friend asked me if she will now get her ebay fees back and I said I would try to find out but I had my doubts.

I'm guessing she means the ebay % on the actual sale, the ebay % on the initial postage cost and the paypal fee. As far as I know, she had a free listing & I am pretty sure that even if she had not, she would not get an actual listing fee back.

Where does she stand when it is a full refund she made on a sale, rather than a cancelled transaction?

[harley_babes_hoard]

No I doubt it the item was sold. It wasn't a cancelled transaction. I suppose you could ask the buyer for a cancellation but that would be dishonest really and the buyer is certainly not obligated to agree to it.

[clarry100]

PayPal should refund their 2.6% but not the transaction fee of 30-cents.
I would very much doubt that eBay will entertain the idea of refunding any FVF tho since as far as they would be concerned it was a genuine sale. It's not their fault that the item turned out to have a defect that the seller had not noticed.
Having said that tho I would talk to them and give it a try. Nothing to lose by trying it on.

[springyzone]

Thanks for the quick replies.

I will let my friend know. She wrote to me and said:

she (the buyer) will post it to me on Monday.
I said to make sure it has the tracking number.

And once I receive it, and I refund her from ebay, then ebay will refund me the percentage will they not?

It has been a while since I sold things myself and I've never had to deal with a refund so I wasn't sure what to tell her. I did try looking it all up on the site map and it is pretty easy to find info on a cancelled transaction but I couldn't find this sort of information for returns.

I fear my friend is in for a disappointment.

[clarry100]

Good luck with it. Let us know what happens.

As Harley said above if there were some way you could get the buyer to agree to a transaction cancellation then your friend would likely get back the ebay FVF.

But correspondence in ebay messages between her and the buyer would have to indicate that the cancellation was buyer requested so that the reason for cancellation as "buyer requested" was valid. Otherwise she could end up risking a seller defect for the cancellation.

[harley_babes_hoard]

I think once the friend refunds in full she will receive a defect anyway. At least that is what happened to me last week, I didn't even try and cancel, I just refunded through paypal then a few days later bam I have a defect.

I thought they had stopped that but apparently not.

[springyzone]

I've already told her she is likely to get a defect but I thought it might come about through feedback.

Her buyer sounds like a very reasonable person actually and I don't think she will get a neg for the transaction,  but all the same, if they get to the bit where they give stars for item description, they may only give 2 or 3 stars for that, on account of the fact the item had a fault the seller had missed.

How much that will affect my friend i don't know as what with all the ebay fees and now this she is a bit fed up. But she may return to selling as she did say she tends to get more money for items on ebay than from selling in other ways eg garage sales.

[englishrosegardens · Accepted solution]

Have a read of this page on receiving fvf credits:

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/sell/credits.html

It's only where they ask ebay to step in that you don't get your fees back.  I'm pretty sure that means if they escalate a case, rather than just click on the button to request a return.  About a month ago I refunded an item that didn't arrive and I got my fvf credited, and no defect.  If they'd had to ask ebay to step in it would have been a different matter.  According to the help page above there's no difference between items not arriving and items not being as described.

[springyzone]

Thanks englishrosegardens. I will forward the link. I didn't find it easy trying to find information the other day. I guess it is all there, it is just a matter of finding it.

[englishrosegardens]

Yes, some things are there but hard to find, others are easy to find - but only when you start off in the right place. Sometimes going to the site map is the best starting place, then just keep clicking on related links on the right side of the page. Sometimes you can find answers by going to the help page but I find this is often like looking for a needle in a haystack!