I requested to cancel an order on May 15. I sent my request to cancel the order after first checking to see the status on eBay showed the item as still awaiting shipment. I briefly stated the reason for my request. I hadn't looked closely enough at the glasses inside the original packaging, they had very thick glass on the base which I knew didn't want given my fused finger thumbs (too heavy to hold). With that cancellation request I also offered to cover the seller's listing fee in case she wouldn't get that part back, and also cover the shipping cost, if somehow the item had already been shipped out by the time my request was made, received, and able to be responded to by the seller on May 15.
The response I got from the seller on May 15 included her claim the item had already been shipped out before my request to cancel came in. Though the seller agreed to cancel the order. I thanked her for agreeing to cancel the order because I knew she didn't have to cancel it, but I asked her for the tracking number that showed it had been shipped out like she said. She did not want to give a tracking number to me and she did not give one to me. She went on to say that she forgot to upload the tracking number and furthermore would need to contact her daughter to have her help recalling the package from usps, and that this process would take days to accomplish. I offered to cover the recall cost as well, and requested the tracking number from her once more, but again she would not provide it. So it went.
She began scolding me in messages asking what was wrong with me, saying I was the one who had requested to return an item that I had already paid for and that had already processed and shipped, what was my problem, did I or did I not want to return it! She complained to me about how she had been left all alone in the shop by her daughter, left trying to figure out how to refund me by herself while her daughter was on vacation. The seller stated I would need to wait some days for my refund, "until after she received the package back." She did not say why she needed to inspect the recalled package or why I needed to wait for her to complete the Cancellation and to receive my refund. She later sent a message telling me no good deed goes unpunished, how lucky I was, or how lucky for me I think is what she said, that she got the package back intact, and how she never had to agree to do any of it (that part is true), and asking me never to bid on any of her items again, and that's her right. The other part what she did I'm not sure about. She did say my tone had changed when I kept asking for the tracking number and my request for it kept getting ignored.
This seller has great feedback and seemingly gets along great with all her other buyers. Unless maybe it's not her, but her daughter who usually runs the business? But her daughter went away on vacation as the seller said in her messages, and her daughter left her "alone in the shop" in charge of the store? I don't understand the acrimony directed at me when I offered to cover expenses if I had the tracking number to prove those expenses happened already (meaning they couldn't be avoided by the cancellation itself). I thought it was a fair thing to do, and I thought it fair to ask for the tracking number. But if my seller has early onset dementia or whatever I can understand her frustration not knowing what to do but I started out apologizing for my not seeing the heavy bases before, and I was offering to mitigate most of the inconvenience from a cancel request. But after the bizarre scoldings I know my own replies got more shrill with each exchange, and how I regret that now. Stupid pride.
I asked for a cancellation and later on provided the seller the highlighted screenshots of my request, pointing out that it was a request to cancel, not a return, but a Return was created nonetheless, despite the fact I did not request one. I did not have the item, right? I did not even have the tracking number for it ever having been shipped as claimed, and was told by the seller she had initiated a recall on the supposedly already-shipped item, so I would never have an item to do a Return with. I pointed out that I did not make a Return request, since I cannot give what I do not have, and never would have, because of the recall-package the seller claimed to put out on it, and that I actually had no tracking number to establish it's whereabouts, to prove I had returned the package to her or prove to eBay either, but those appeals to reason were all ignored by the seller. The seller remained unconvinced I had made my cancellation request, she maintained in messages that I had requested to start a Return and that all the delay was due to me, because I was somehow dragging my feet, "Do you or don't you want to return this!"
I am signed up with USPS Informed Delivery service and so I usually receive notifications when a shipping label has been created, or a parcel inbound to me has been accepted, along with when and where these things occurred. Scanning events, transit exceptions, redirected packages, any of those things, I can see it. But I never received any notification for any package being shipped to me and recalled by the seller. Just a notification from today's freshly generated label.
My seller created a shipping label with tracking just today. The seller uploaded the tracking number from it to eBay today, on May 18. There is no evidence the package was ever shipped out on or before May 15 as claimed, much less recalled by the seller or her daughter during the period following, or that the shipping costs claimed and now retained by the seller were ever incurred before today.
The seller issued a partial refund today, under the Return she created. She is now keeping the cost for shipping, as I noted.
My offer to cover the cost of her listing fee and the cost of shipping the item, and the cost to recall the package was made on condition that the item had already been shipped prior to my request to cancel being received. Only it apparently wasn't shipped by that time. The seller could have cancelled it, since to all evidences it never was shipped by the time I asked to cancel it, but she didn't. Then came today's partial refund under a Return I did not request, with a newly minted tracking number for shipping starting today on it.
I'm not real proud or happy that I wrote back to her the way that I did, with highlighted screenshots of our messages and my repeated (ignored) requests for her to provide me with the original tracking number from May 15 or before. I was trying to show her where she was mistaken, again, stupid pride. I called eBay to ask about what should I do. I was told to refuse delivery. Is there any consensus on doing that? I'm not even talking about a lot of money that I'm out, less than $15. It's the way it was taken from me that has my attention.
Does anyone know how the seller was able to create a Return Request without me and carry out actions under such a case without my knowledge or my consent?
USPS could give me no information about her claiming she shipped and recalled a package addressed to me. Just the information from the label she created today.
