Buyer Contacted Customer Support - Really???

[chrisswansea]

Hi, I sell low value items and often send overseas so tracked mail is not economical for me or the buyers. Therefore I am prepared for things to need replacing or refunding. If a customer contacts me to advise something is late I will see if they are OK to wait a little longer or send out a new one. 9 times out of 10 they are happy with this, polite, understanding. The rest just want a refund.

However it happens fairly often that despite saying they are OK to wait, a couple of days later I will get a 'Buyer Contacted Customer Support' email shortly followed by a refund.

The buyers always deny that this was them and that they were still happy to wait, even if I hadn't resent anything yet. 

Ebay CS tells me that ebay is unable to initiate this themselves and so the customers must be lying but I struggle to believe I am having so many conversations with liars, especially as they have no obligation to keep talking to me. 

The time between opening a case and contacting customer support always seems to be 3 or 4 days and when the claim is made for a refund on a multi buy it's always just for one item and they get confused why I refund for one item and not the whole order, they seem genuinely unaware any of this happening. Is ebay lying to me? 

Anybody else had this happen to them? 

[12345jamesstamps]

I don't get as many "items not received" by buyers of other countries anymore since I have a lot more items for sale.

They do open cases and I usually say it's on the way. But I will refund the day before the refund is due to the buyer. I would never take the word of a buyer saying they will wait longer. I just refund them and block them. 

A buyer has to open a case with each item purchased to get that refund of all items mailed together. I just do the refund thing. It's the buyer's problem if they don't understand what to do. There can be a language problem explaining it. Plus the money exchange rate between 2 countries can be confusing to the buyer.

I would never send another item to same buyer if first one got lost. I just do the refund and explain to buyer if first one didn't make why would second one make it to you.

[awwb3879]

I'm surprised you haven't received more feedback in relation to this because it is blatantly obvious that ebay itself initiates that outcome at the very first moment it is eligible to step in. As you've mentioned,  communicating with the buyers through the process is stressed to remedy the situation yet that gets booted in lieu of them refunding the buyer virtually instantaneously through the bot process which of course has zero human element involved with the decision making process.  I find it to be a slap in the face frankly to expect us sellers to believe that every single buyer who opens a dispute then reaches out precisely at 3:19 a.m. as though they were on standby at their keyboard when in reality they were probably snoring. So the message that sends me is that they don't want you to resolve the problem probably so that they can charge the seller more money on fees...that's the only logic that I can come up with

[chrisswansea]

Agreed on the fees thing. I recently took in a few returns , all from one odd customer who kept buying and returning endlessly, had to block them in the end.

Wife took the packages while I was away and then three whole days before the deadline to refund, the customer  opened cases to get the refund, and would you have guessed it,?... ebay didnt return the fees due to it being immediately found in the buyer's favour. That was £10 ebay pocketed.
Why ebay let them open cases before the deadline makes no sense.
It's a total racket.