mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
One of eBays troubling procedure, perhaps illegal at best is, its refund procedure. A customer bought an item by mistake and happens sometimes. He asked to cancel the order and I did. But eBay completed the cancellation and processed the refund before processing the the payment. Next time, if a buyer request a cancellation, I will have to wait until it is processed and then cancel. But that holds everyone except pinkertons at eBay.
I don't want eBay refunding money out of my pocket for cancellation of a sale that it has yet to be processed.
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Because you don't agree with a process doesn't make it "illegal". Ebay is a pretty big site to risk their business by doing something illegal on a process as simple as refunding a buyer. It just doesn't sound like something logical.
Ebay has been doing this since you entered MP. It usually takes Ebay 24 hours and sometimes even less to clear a payment. So your exposure is likely just a matter of hours. Now if you do Daily Payouts, then that may cause you to have zero in your MP account to pay for a refund to a buyer. If it doesn't cause you any problems, you might consider going to a Weekly Payout then issuing refunds will likely not cause you any issues in the future.
While you haven't noticed this before, it is processed the same way since 2020. What has changed for you to make this an issue?
Why try to insult Ebay when you aren't aware of a process that really hasn't changed? I'm not sure I understand why that is necessary.
@yoonix1 wrote:Why do you want to collect for something you will never deliver? There is no flaw in this EBay procedure. Nothing comes out of your pocket.
The OP does have a point. They are refunding the buyer because they requested the Cancellation before their payment has cleared and move to Available funds.
I think you misunderstood.
@yoonix1 wrote:The OP implied also that this cancellation comes out of his/her pocket. There is no misunderstanding. You know for sure that this money are handled inside so called Seller's wallet. The money are not cleared for Seller's use, and will never be because the Seller will deliver nothing to the Buyer. The cancellation was made just on time. Buyer doesn't have to wait for cancellation nor the Seller can hold Buyer's money. If the item was already shipped, there is a different story, but it's not a case in this post.
Cuz it did. If they didn't have any money available in their MP account, then it would pull from their attached checking account or their credit card on file.
Buyer does have to wait as the seller has time to choose whether they are going to honor the cancellation request or deny it. A seller has up to 3 days to respond to a cancellation request.
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/member-behavior-policies/order-cancellation-policy?id=5298
@bbcardzman wrote:I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS TO EBAY FOR YEARS NOW. And they don't care. The stupidity of refunding people before their original payment goes through is the stupidest business model I have ever heard. What I do is inform the customer that their refund will happen as soon as their original payment goes through, and then I do not refund them until the next day. eBay just has people who do not understand that they are losing money on this yet and when they do, which might take a while, they will probably fix it. (Most likely)
It could be that you don't understand how the money gets processed. It isn't that Ebay doesn't care, it is because Ebay has sellers covered on this. You just misunderstand how that happens. Hopefully this will help.
Ebay started onboarding sellers to the Managed Payments program in July of 2020. On boarding was completed on or about December 2021. Prior to this, sellers used Paypal.
When a buyer purchases an item and submits payment, Ebay pings the buyer's payment source to make sure the payment is good. The buyer's payment source then puts those funds in the Pending status to make sure the payment to Ebay is covered.
The seller gets notification that the buyer has paid and the seller can ship. The funds show on the Selling Hub in the MP Summary as Being Processed.
In the beginning it took Ebay 24 -48 hours to clear pending payments. Since they have dramatically improved the process and they have the payments cleared most times in less than 24 hours. So once the actual money moves from the buyers payment source to Managed Payments, the funds move to Available for the seller.
It is important to understand that once Ebay pings the buyer's payment source the buyer can not void, cancel or otherwise change the payment in any way. While the money sits in Processing, it is there just because the money has to move from the buyer's payment source into the sellers account. There is ZERO risk to the seller that this money would not get cleared.
There is ZERO risk to the seller that this money would not get cleared.
Yes.
However.
There can be an argument for a scenario where the payment is still pending, and you have none or insufficient previous available funds to cover a return.
In that particular scenario, eBay might hit your linked bank account to cover the upfront return cost ahead of your pending payment for said item. Sure it may balance out a day later, but.
This could in a unique situation put the seller in a quandary , if by happenstance that same bank account also couldn't cover the refund, or the withdraw affected other transactions for that linked account.
So while in common practice for most sellers if they use a weekly deposit schedule and sell items often enough, this won't be a problem, or if they always have a balance available in the linked account to cover a discrepancy, again, no problem. But it can be said that for some instances it could cause an issue.
That's what I would understand from the primary OP post. But that's me.
