How to deal with delayed items arriving late, yet buyer refusing or ignoring to pay back?

[semperstraps]

This COVID crisis has created (for me at least) a situation where shipments take MUCH longer to arrive to certain countries, most of which I already stopped my shipments too, but some were sent in April-May and because eBay has been horrendous at managing buyer's expectations, many opened cases on me few weeks after buying, although the items too in some case 2+ months to reach them.

Now when I start checking some of those tracking numbers, some arrived, messaged few buyers about it and I've had a couple that simply told me "straight to my face" in their message that they won't pay back. One wrote something along the lines: "its August now, at the time when I applied for a refund I had not received my item, it took so long, I cannot pay you back" and another something similar. 

eBay ALWAYS rushes to refund buyers as soon as its possible, without giving any extra window of time to give a chance for items to arrive or at least so that I as a seller can be within a timeframe to challenge the case and of course I cannot claim with local postal service either, because by now item(s) have arrived 😥

Do you also have such cases at the moment, and how do you deal with it? Besides some people being dishonest, I place most of the blame on eBay itself, because the way they word their money back guarantee as well as follow-up emails following a forced refund by them, it makes them feel completely entitled to keep the item AND money when it eventually arrives, not even a mention in there that they should pay the seller back, or some link/way to arrange that, in fact they also make it difficult to contact buyer at all after some times has passed. 

Thanks for your thoughts/ideas. 

[rebell45]

You have only 30 days to appeal a case when eBay has refunded a buyer for an Item not Received claim. If 30 days is not long enough, you need to drastically cut back on the  counties that you ship to or change you shipping methods.

[aldente28]

I proposed a solution to this in a post, just a few days ago:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Solution-to-the-quot-refund-for-INR-while-order-is-in-transit/...

This is how I think ebay should deal with it. You shouldn't have to, in my view. Not like this.

[chapeau-noir]

I had to quit shipping internationally.  I'm not sure what will help in your situation as you're in Cyprus - can you settle on a certain distribution radius or countries where the mails are running more smoothly?  I know in the US the postal service has printed a list of countries who are not having in-country delivery at all, and it's pretty long (that's from the US, though which, well, we're having some problems here).  I've had to refund for very, very patient international buyers - I haven't had anyone pay me back, but who knows if they even got the stuff.

ETA: Compensation for this from ebay is simply not in the cards.

[jack_bucks_ghost]

I've been lucky so far and only had one situation like you have described. The package fell off tracking for a 10 days--no progress or updates since it arrived at my regional post office. The buyer had been quite patient, but finally asked for a refund. As it goes, the package was delivered the day after I processed the refund. Luck was still on my side, though, as the buyer promptly sent the money right back to me--and left me positive feedback (with a playful "fast shipping" plug).  Unfortunately, not all folks are as honest as the buyer I was lucky enough to work with on this one.