1. Should have chosen to pay for a return label. its deeply discounted (at least is was in my case)
2. You could have taken a moment to try to get the buyer to accept responsibility for the return shipping in message.
3. when the item got back you could have inspected, and then if you determined that said reason for return was false you could have then opened an appeal to report the buyer for this behavior. This would have placed the buyer on ebays radar and would have given you an opportunity to get your initial shipping and return shipping courtesy refunded (I know because I have been in this exactly situation recently)
The real big lessons here is
1. you should have come to talk us before you made any kind of a move on this. You would have gotten some really sound advice as plenty of us have had to learn the hard way.
2. I think what you said is that your wrapped the original pop vinyl box in plastic and then packing peanuts went into the box that the item went into for shipment. If thats the case probably a bogus return and you made all of the wrong decisions during the resolution. If I am wrong and you filled the original pop vinyl box with packing peanuts around the iron man figurine.....well then if its a collectable pop, you ruined a huge amount of its collectability and the customer is justified.
No assumptions made as to which it is. In any event in the future if you run into a similar problem, come talk to us first, before you have a chance chase a bad situation down with a small collection of mistakes. Most of us know that these situations are hard to swallow.
