Okay, the reason I asked those questions was because I have pretty strong ethical concerns about this subject of partial refunds. As someone mentioned, it's one of the few protections that eBay gives sellers. In my view it's to "level out" two extreme truths that sellers face: That we have to issue a refund for every INAD return even if the buyer's reason is an obvious lie ... and .... issuing a refund may be catastrophic if it's a "large" amount of money (depends on your circumstance of course; for some sellers $100 is nothing; for others it would mean getting a utility cut off or whatever). So having an avenue for issuing less than 100% can be a real blessing.
SO FAR eBay gives sellers a pretty simple way to do it, with no evidence needed besides a photograph (which in most cases human eyes won't even see). And SO FAR what happens if the buyer appeals is that eBay will issue them the rest of the refund out of THEIR (eBay's) revenues. So in a sense eBay gives the seller that money! But it's out of sheer trust that we won't abuse it.
And by the way, not only is eBay willing to pony up money they don't "have" to give (which is almost unheard of in the corporate world) .... they surely realize that this feature runs the risk of losing buyers, whether or not they get the remaining money from appealing, and whether or not they really deserved the deduction from the seller. Keeping buyers is obviously important to eBay, so to be honest I'm kinda shocked this feature exists at all. And what I fear is sellers ABUSING it, which if it got too rampant, surely eBay would take it away.
But then on the other hand, I also have very strong feelings about clothing "renters" as I said above^. And by the way, when they do it to Macy's or Dillards or whatever it's one thing; when they do it to some single mom or retiree trying to scrape bill money, it's disgusting.
SO! -In this case I think you absolutely should retain 50% of this refund, here's why: The buyer purposely removed the security tag and possessed the dress for 2 weeks, far more than the time needed to try it on for size, and long enough to wear it to whatever event she bought it for. And this is a crucial factor: you said it's a FORMAL dress. Many stores don't even give refunds for formals -why? Because they KNOW that formal attire is something people will likely wear only once, not add to their regular wardrobe. And (this I can't begin to understand) -for some reason people, women in particular, tend to seek a NEW garment to wear to a formal occasion, rather than find something at a thrift store or Marketplace or whatever, even though they know they'll wear it only once. And the reason I bring that up is, you will definitely have a harder time selling that dress again without the security tag that proved it had never been worn!
If you want to deduct 'some' but consider 50% too much, that's up to you. But definitely keep in mind the fact that you won't get any seller fees back, whereas if you issued a 100% refund, you would. I don't know what % you paid for promotion, but add that to the 15% Final Value Fee, and that's the amount eBay would give you if you issued the full refund. But I also think this buyer deserves to learn a lesson from this.
If you do decide to issue a partial refund but don't know how, come back and ask for help. Also, you started this thread 4 days ago so I'm curious -do you see tracking yet? Like is the dress on the way back to you yet?
Simply-the-best-for-you Volunteer Community Mentor
