Interesting Ebay Problem - Buyer Wants To Return Refund

I have a good customer who had an item he bought from me get stuck in the USPS system with the other 1000s of things that are floating around somewhere. I kept assuring him it would turn up but he was getting antsy so I refunded his payment. Of course 2 days later the item showed up at his door. He promptly notified me and asked how he could repay me.

After some thought I realized with managed payments I didn't know what to tell him. I considered just using Paypal on our own but we don't know each others email and ebay makes it difficult to exchange email addresses through their message system. As a last resort I called ebay and got a good rep. He admitted that ebay has made no provision for a situation like this and suggested using Paypal independently. I explained the ebay messaging system limits on sending email addresses and he said in a case like this the message monitoring group would allow it. I'm a little skeptical but I sent my email address to the customer and we'll see what happens.

I thought I'd share this experience in case others find themselves in the same situation and I will report the outcome of this adventure.

Ken

That's one of the reasons I pull down periodic sales reports from ebay. It includes customer email and address data if you need it.

The easiest route, absent an email address, is for the buyer to find the refund payment and reverse it in paypal. I had a similar experience with ebay telling me to handle refunds that way.

Interesting that you got your email address through the ebay system.

Have tried many times to do this and it never gets sent. ebay auto stops it.

I was in the same position as your customer (not for a stamp purchase). After both I and the seller got no good answers from ebay I just told the sellers that I would send a private ebay payment if I had an email. I guess they considered it not worth the trouble (it wasn't a large purchase) and ended up letting me keep the item gratis.

This hole in the ebay process is the main reason I try my best to hold back on refunds until absolutely necessary. I have one outstanding item right now that I mailed Jan 29 and has had zero tracking scans. I tried to be proactive and wrote to the buyer to assure him/her that I was monitoring and would refund it if it was truly lost. They wrote back immediately and asked for a refund now. So much for proactive. Fortunately I was able to talk the buyer into waiting a bit longer.

The last time I needed to get an email address past the computers I wrote it out as 'john at msn dot com' minus the quotes. It got by but I don't know if it was how I wrote it or the computer was just asleep that day. My customer understood it.

I write down the return mailing address from every seller's shipment. I'll add the email address if it shows up on my Paypal invoice. Then I don't have to go through hoops at ebay if I need to contact the seller for any reason.

With every sale I make, I will add inside the shipment an email address how to reach me.

One way to do it that has worked for me when needed is to write your email address in text, take a screen shot, crop it down, and save as a jpg. Then attach to the email. You may get caught, but at least you can explain your reasons.

I have never been caught.

A number of ebay sellers with whom I make regular purchases always include a business card with their shipment.

It seems to me that every ebay seller who wants to maintain an ongoing working relationship with a customer to whom they had sold an item should consider including a business card, or the equivalent information on paper, with every shipment.

Like uboatnut mentioned, I try and record the seller information for everyone from whom I buy on ebay.

Assuming that you use one of the common - eg Hotmail or Google - email addresses that most are familiar with, it's pretty straightforward to signal it via the ebay message system.

The business card insertion is brilliant and if the card has a phone number and address the "deal with in confidence" factor is extremely high.

I always pay cash or check for anything I buy. Because of that I don't use ebay. Except for one vendor. He accepts cash/ check for payment. Years ago he had included a card with his address and email. I contacted him,and ever since I look at his offerings every week.(. I also joined APS because he recommended it on his card.)
It's a great idea to include this information when sending a purchase. If you want to build relationships beyond making the sale. Relationships are important when things go wrong. By the way, when my check takes 4 weeks to get somewhere I am not looking for my purchase for at least 4 weeks.

I had this happen recently where I was the buyer. After the refund like stated the item arrived (2 months after order) so I contacted the seller and we did the paypal direct method.

I recently ran into the same problem as a buyer. The item showed up about three weeks after the seller's refund. I couldn't figure out how to send a payment through ebay, so I resorted to the old fashioned way and simply mailed him a check.

Good morning.

I have had the same situation.

What I do is put an item out on ebay with their name, and a buy-it-now price for the amount of the item.

That way, everyone (including ebay) is happy.

Stay safe.