mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
This does happen from time to time. As long as you shipped the item per Ebay's requirements, you would be covered under Seller Protection if the buyer were to file an INR. The buyer would not win.
The things you need to do to qualify for seller protection is: Ship within your stated handling time, ship with electronic tracking, update the listing with the tracking number if you used another label source other than Ebay and if the sale was $750+ you need to require a signature upon delivery.
Ebay has no vehicle in which to handle this type of situation, even though it is a common issue. So Ebay is aware that you may need to go offsite to get paid for reshipping and that is NOT an issue. It will not cause any problems with Ebay.
When the item arrives back, notify your buyer that you need to send them an invoice through PayPal [or however you want to do it outside of Ebay] for the reshipping costs. You need to charge whatever you did originally for shipping plus non recoverable fees like the fees from the site you are sending the invoice from. Let the buyer know to pay the invoice and then you will reship the item. Remind the buyer to make sure their ship to address is correct on the new payment.
Once the buyer has paid to reship the item, then create your new shipping label, however DO NOT do it from the original transaction in Ebay. That is risky as it could cause you to lose the details of the original tracking history which you need to maintain for your protection. Create you shipping label from PayPal or whatever site you prefer except NOT Ebay.
Then ship it and you are done.
Now if your buyer decides that YOU should foot this bill for reshipment, simply professionally and politely tell them NO as you did not create or have control over the issue. But if they don't want to pay for the reshipping, then you would be happy to refund them for their original purchase through Ebay LESS the original shipping and all non recoverable fees. Which would be the fees on the amount you keep plus the 30 or 40 cent per transaction fee. Buyer's choice pay to reship or refund original purchase with deductions described.
Do not worry about your feedback. If the buyer did venture out to try and post a negative feedback, chances are extremely high you could get it removed for cause.
Per the Ebay rules, you actually don't have to do anything for this buyer. You could actually get the item back, keep it and keep the buyer's money too. Ebay will not force you to refund on a situation like this. I an others do not support the taking advantage of the buyer and just keep their money and the product. Many of us do not feel that is the correct approach.
