So I had a buyer request a return/cancel. I see the money immediately taken from my balance and put on hold. When I received the item I refunded and the money was taken from a zero balance now and a note that it would be taken from my bank account, while the money that was put on hold is still there. That’s also when I noticed that the money on hold was for the total amount that eBay received including the taxes. I called CS and they filed an appeal to stop the money from being taken out of my bank and to use the held money. I was told it could take up to 24 hours to see the money taken off hold. During this time I thought to myself why would eBay put in system to take the whole amount they get (not me) just to make an extra step for themselves to have to refund me the difference back. Well, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions now because when the money was taken off hold everything went back to a zero balance. I did not get the difference in money that was owed to me from the taxes they received. Which meant eBay kept additional money. I had to call CS and I was told this is an issue that they are aware of and in a couple Months it would hopefully be resolved. She said she gets dozens of calls a day and hopefully I would get my money back but that she couldn’t guarantee it! She said all she could do was file an appeal. A few hours later I see in payments (not in the hold section) but in small details in transaction history a hold for another amount of the same money they owe me, which means now they are charging me twice to pay for the taxes on an item the buyer paid eBay and on a returned item. Now I’m a small seller so I was able to see when I refunded the buyer easily that the money held was larger than the amount of my refund, but if you don’t notice it and just see money held on a return and everything turns back to a zero balance some people might think it just evened out. That means eBay would just keep your money because you have to file an appeal to get your money back. You can’t tell me this is just a glitch that you’ve known about for months, you have a full team of IT people and that it takes months to correct. I mean when they programmed this, why would they have programmed it to make an extra step for them to have to go back and refund sellers the difference?!?! I asked the lady that and all she could say was that none of them understood this or why eBay wanted it this way. So if you have a return/refund make sure you pay attention to the totals taken out of your account.
