Do seller initiated refunds harm your defect rate?

Question

I occasionally get eBay Standard Envelopes returned to me because of an address error on the part of the buyer. Often times, these buyers will not even reach out to alert me their item hadn't arrived. It's not super common. But it's frequent enough to be time consuming trying to reach out to all the customers who don't alert me themselves. The easiest action would be to just refund these buyers (rather than cancel) with a message explaining what happened. But I fear refunding for "item not recei...

lady_madonna · Accepted Answer

@bmc_games You can cancel the transaction for the reason "problem with buyer's shipping address" and you will not be penalized.