I just spent a reasonable amount of time with eBay's customer service department attempting to clarify how the new seller dashboard will operate and was told some things I didn't understand before.

On looking at the pop-up page i was surprised so see that I had an open case against me that I had never been aware of. I was told it was from May 2013 and which sale it related to. The sale in question related to a new garment which the seller found had a damaged press stud. She contacted me, I immediately offered a partial refund to have it repaired, or an immediate full refund. She chose the full refund which I processed immediately through Paypal, and posted her an addressed pre-paid satchel to return the item, which she did. Apparantly she also opened an item not as described case (which I was never informed about - possibly because the money had already been refunded), and the record remains against my account as an "unresolved  case". When I complained about this I was told to talk to Paypal.

My next question was about the defect rate for "items out of stock or sold to someone else". I had already spoken to them about this because I had some recorded, when I had never given this reason for refunding, mainly because I don't carry lines of stock, or sell anywhere else.

It was explained to me that from now on, ANY refund through Paypal will automatically count as a defect against the seller, ANY case open against a seller - no matter whose favour the dispute is resolved in - will be counted as a defect against the seller, AND the buyer can still go on and leave negative feedback. The person I spoke to could not give me an example of a case where such a dispute would NOT count as a defect against the seller.

I was told this system was to encourage sellers and buyers to resolve issues themselves. I said "But if I do that and refund all or part of a buyer's money, I still get a defect for processing a refund through Paypal, and if I don't refund and the buyer opens a case, I get a defect automatically - regardless of the outcome". CORRECT.

She also told me that there was no "work around" of this in a case where the seller is not at all at fault.

In the past I have given people their money back for whatever reason, just to keep the peace and my feedback intact but right now I don't know what to do. If someone asks me to cancel a transaction - I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't....

I don't know about the rest of my fellow travellers in the selling game, but this scares the bejesus out of me....

Marina.