Just when I thought I'd seen it all; buyer wants refund on sale they cancelled...

[nationalpawnshop]

On Saturday, Sept 14th, we sold a Dewalt driver. Two minutes after the end of the auction the buyer sent through a formal request to cancel the order. The following morning, Sunday, I cancelled it and relisted the Dewalt.

Monday morning I came in to work to find that had several items that had sold and were Awaiting Shipment. We shipped them all out.

Yesterday we received a notification that the buyer of the Dewalt had opened a request; wanting a refund on the basis of Item Not Received. Well, they didn't receive it because we didn't ship it because they'd cancelled the order. It turns out that they did pay for it. That Monday morning we had received a Notification of Payment Received emails from PayPal that notified of several payments. We didn't check through it because we assumed that everything that was ready to ship was listed in the Items Awaiting Shipment page. But, of course, because the order had been cancelled it didn't appear in the list.

I don't mind issuing the refund but obviously this illustrates a flaw in the eBay process. How can a buyer pay for an item if they've cancelled the transaction? And if it doesn't appear in the Items Awaiting Shipment list how are we supposed to know that it needs to be shipped?

[ersatz_sobriquet]

I don't think it's a flaw, I think it is by design. Ebay wants to make sure the buyer is happy even if they hit the wrong button, so ebay let's the buyer go back for seconds. 

[biutvzniz_0]

I believe they paid first then requested a cancel, you'll need to check from your end to see if the refund was issued however there does exist a flaw where the buyer can request a refund even thou the sale has been cancelled... I believe you may have to call customer service on this one...

One more thing, should a buyer request a refund before paying for an auction item you should go through the UID process but that's a story for another day.

[nationalpawnshop]

Actually, it appears that they won the auction at 9:57pm on Saturday, Sept 14. The "buyer requested to cancel this order" came through at 9:59pm, Saturday. They paid 7:39am on Sunday Sept 15 and, without knowing they had, we accepted their cancellation at 7:58am Sunday.

If they filed to cancel they shouldn't have been able to pay and once we accepted that cancellation anything they had paid should've been automatically refunded. Now we have to deal with this stupid Item Not Received request...

[fern*wood]

That's a weird one for sure.  I can see the ability to pay still being available to the buyer even though they requested to cancel, because you can deny the request.  I guess they got scared you weren't going to respond, so they just paid.

I would also think you accepting the cancellation would refund anything paid, but what do I know.   If you have triple checked to make sure the payment was not refunded already, then I think refunding now would close the case and end the confusing mess.

[nationalpawnshop]

I plan to issue the refund. But I replied to the request that the buyer had cancelled the transaction. I want to know why they cancelled and then paid.

[fern*wood]

That's how you responded to the case?  I understand the question, but I wouldn't make that my response.   I would fear them asking ebay to step in if you didn't already refund.  Some buyers just get scared and don't know the process.

[nationalpawnshop]

Nobody can ask eBay to step in for another three days. If they don't reply by tonight I'll issue the refund. For what it's worth they've been an eBay member since November 2017 and have a feedback score of 8. Maybe they don't know what they're doing but they should; this isn't kindergarten.

[chapeau-noir]

That happened to me once - the buyer changed their mind on the cancellation and rebought, but it was nowhere to be found, so I didn't ship it, thinking it was canceled and not seeing it in my sales. A week later I get a very pleasant note from the buyer asking when I might ship her item - I mentioned the cancelation and she sent me a screen dump of her phone showing that the transaction had gone through. I started hunting around and never did find that danged sale, but it was in my solds (??) I shipped it to her with apologies, saying I had got really wrong-footed and wasn't sure what had happened.  She had no problems with it.  Oh, and I couldn't leave her FB, either.  She got her product and was happy with it and the service, and I'm still scratching my head over that.  I think there was some kind of double negative going on there.

[coolections]

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@nationalpawnshop wrote:

Actually, it appears that they won the auction at 9:57pm on Saturday, Sept 14. The "buyer requested to cancel this order" came through at 9:59pm, Saturday. They paid 7:39am on Sunday Sept 15 and, without knowing they had, we accepted their cancellation at 7:58am Sunday.

If they filed to cancel they shouldn't have been able to pay.

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A buyer can pay anytime they wish up until you AGREE to the cancellation. This scenario the buyer paid BEFORE you agreed so the item was still up for grabs.

[nationalpawnshop]

That's exactly a big part of our problem with this. It doesn't appear in any of our lists on eBay. Not Items Awaiting Shipment, Items Awaiting Payment, Unsold, Ended, Paid & Shipped or even Cancellations! The only indication that it was paid for was the email notification from PayPal that we'd overlooked because it came along with several others. To us those are just a record. We rely on Items Awaiting Shipment to know what's been paid for and ready to ship. How would I even generate a shipping label for a cancelled transaction even if the buyer paid for it?

[coffeebean832]

@nationalpawnshop wrote:

How would I even generate a shipping label for a cancelled transaction even if the buyer paid for it?

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You can generate a label from the PayPal transaction or you can go outside of the transaction and use paypal.com/shipnow or buy a label at the post office.

The confusing part to me is why the refund wasn't automated when you accepted the cancellation.

Could it have had something to do with the cancellation request being sent before the buyer paid then you accepted through that request? If you had ignored the request- went to the transaction and initiated a cancellation on your own using buyer requested- would that have had a different result? Just throwing out some ideas as it sounds like an odd system loophole. @Anonymous- can you look at what happened here and see if anything needs to be addressed within the system?

[Anonymous]

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@nationalpawnshop wrote:

On Saturday, Sept 14th, we sold a Dewalt driver. Two minutes after the end of the auction the buyer sent through a formal request to cancel the order. The following morning, Sunday, I cancelled it and relisted the Dewalt.

Monday morning I came in to work to find that had several items that had sold and were Awaiting Shipment. We shipped them all out.

Yesterday we received a notification that the buyer of the Dewalt had opened a request; wanting a refund on the basis of Item Not Received. Well, they didn't receive it because we didn't ship it because they'd cancelled the order. It turns out that they did pay for it. That Monday morning we had received a Notification of Payment Received emails from PayPal that notified of several payments. We didn't check through it because we assumed that everything that was ready to ship was listed in the Items Awaiting Shipment page. But, of course, because the order had been cancelled it didn't appear in the list.

I don't mind issuing the refund but obviously this illustrates a flaw in the eBay process. How can a buyer pay for an item if they've cancelled the transaction? And if it doesn't appear in the Items Awaiting Shipment list how are we supposed to know that it needs to be shipped?

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Hi @nationalpawnshop, there are many reasons why they may have felt this was the right decision, and you would need to communicate with them about their intentions if you would like to understand. They could have simply been confused or paid in error.

As it stands, I see that the payment has not been refunded so the item not received request was the appropriate request for the buyer to make to obtain a refund. Normally the payment is reversed when you accept the cancellation, but sometimes this refund does not process and you would need to refund directly through the transaction in PayPal. Since there is an item not received request open, you can refund through the request itself. You would be protected from any feedback or defect issues since the buyer requested to cancel the order, so if these concerns arise be sure to touch base with Customer Service.

[biutvzniz_0]

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@nationalpawnshop wrote:

Actually, it appears that they won the auction at 9:57pm on Saturday, Sept 14. The "buyer requested to cancel this order" came through at 9:59pm, Saturday. They paid 7:39am on Sunday Sept 15 and, without knowing they had, we accepted their cancellation at 7:58am Sunday.

If they filed to cancel they shouldn't have been able to pay and once we accepted that cancellation anything they had paid should've been automatically refunded. Now we have to deal with this stupid Item Not Received request...

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Ok, if a buyer ASKS to cancel ebay still allows them to pay... Because the cancellation is a mere request so this part is understandable... However their payment should have been refunded when you accepted their cancellation, are you sure it wasn't so?

Of course you could just issue a refund on the Item Not Received as I do not believe it would refund twice... 

Feeling lucky?

I still think this warrants a call to the great CS.

[chapeau-noir]

In my case the buyer was good enough to send that screen dump of her bank account, and I double checked with paypal (checking dates) - the payment was in there so I was able to verify it.  I had gone through the procedure of cancellation and refund, and her record showed that, too - I just didn't know about that second payment when she changed her mind and rebought.  She did say that she purchase it from the original listing which she had on her watch list.  I hadn't even relisted it.

This is the only time it's happened in the 18 years I've been selling here so it seems like a one-off thing.