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@cadburygal wrote:

"Until eBay decided to count these as "defective" sales.

 

Not only is this nonsensical, but on the "defect rate" table, it clearly says, "Canceled transactions: out of stock or sold to someone else" which is 100% inaccurate, because that isn't what happened."

 

Totally agree.

 

Upon checking our dashboard, I see the same reason (as above) listed against 2 defects and we have never, ever, EVER cancelled a transaction for any reason other than at the request of a buyer!

 

To add insult to injury, we have also received defects on a transaction from February, where an inexperienced buyer purchased multiple items and paid for each item separately.

This meant the buyer overpaid by paying postage on each item bought.

We kindly refunded each individual transaction (of our own accord) & then combined all items onto one invoice with postage price completely removed (we have a free post offer) so that the buyer may pay again in one transaction and saving her $3.10.

For our kindness, from Ebay, we get multiple defects!!! (At least the buyer was appreciative).

 

The way this is going, no-one is going to win but Ebay.

 

The sellers can't win, because we are penalised for trying to do right by our buyers and the buyers will end up overpaying, because sellers will be reluctant to refund at all as it impacts them negatively to do so.

 

Becoming really disheartened lately 😞

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IMO, eBay is 100% wrong on this issue, but we know by now that we can't rely on them to fix it.

I went back, downloaded my "defect report" and discovered that one of my two "cancelled transactions" isn't one of the ones above (the buyer who clicked "buy it now" on the wrong item). Only the other one (the buyer who just wanted to watch the item) is counting as a defect. Which is even more confusing because I chose the exact same reason for both ("buyer changed mind"), both buyers accepted . . . so I don't know why one would count and one wouldn't.

Anyway.

I discovered that the other transaction is one where I refunded my buyer - they paid for multiple items separately over 24 hrs and because I was able to combine postage, the postage I refunded them was equal to one of the payments - so I simple refunded one of their payments in full to make up for the extra postage paid.

Wrong move. It now counts as a defect because I refunded the entire payment. I should've partially refunded several of their payments to make up the extra postage, and then I wouldn't be counting a defect. (I have several other partial refunds and none of them are counting as defects . . . )

tl;dr version: don't fully refund any payments, because you'll end up with a defect. If you want to refund your buyer for overpaying postage (or any other reason), do a partial refund on several payments, because partial refunds aren't counted as defects.