Buyer gave wrong address and package has been sent back

[econ-express]

Buyer forgot to add apartment number to his order and package has been sent back because it could not be delivered. Should I cancel his order and give him his money back? I just don't want to get a defect or have it affect my seller metrics. Any advice is welcome. Thanks!

[klhmdg]

Once you have the item back, it is up to you, but I would refund the item price.

If you have "free shipping" you cannot withhold shipping from the refund.

If the buyer leaves negative FB you can have that removed.

I cant see how it would affect your seller metrics. 

[fab_finds4u]

Give the buyer a choice.  They can repay shipping and you send it or  you can refund deducting shipping because it was spent to ship it.

[heckofagame]

I just had a buyer that did a similar thing. The address was for a large office building. It came back. I refunded the purchase price of the item.

[krazzykats]

Ask your buyer.

[wastingtime101]

@econ-express This is my standard advice for RTS (returned to sender) packages. Take the parts that are relevant to your situation.

You have a few options. You should decide which route you'll be taking and communicate with the buyer, but wait until the item is returned (and delivered) to you before you take any of the following actions.

• You can refund the buyer the item cost minus original shipping and minus a portion of your eBay fees (fee credits are prorated on a partial refund so you won't get back fees on the shipping amount you withhold). Go to your orders page, find the transaction and select "send refund." On the next page enter the amount. After that, relist the item and if you still want to work with this buyer you can tell them to repurchase it with the correct name/address.
• Have the buyer sort out their address issue then pay for re-shipping. Send them an invoice through PayPal or give them your PayPal e-mail. This is post-sale so it's OK to exchange e-mail addresses. It's also OK to ship to a different address because it's technically not tied to the original transaction. You would not purchase the shipping label through eBay or upload tracking to the transaction. You would purchase it from an alternate site like pirateship.com or paypal.com/shipnow and you can send the buyer the new tracking # through e-mail or eBay messages.
• A different way to accomplish buyer payment for re-shipping is to create an eBay listing for the shipping cost (bumping it up to factor in eBay fees) and having the buyer purchase it, entering their correct address at checkout. You could purchase a shipping label through eBay for that transaction.
• You can cancel the transaction "problem with address" which will trigger a full refund to the buyer and your FVF would be credited.
• You can do nothing. The buyer's MBG protection is voided when there's a package delivery attempt. I don't recommend this because even though you'll win an INR (item not received) claim on eBay, there's nothing stopping that buyer from going to their credit card to file a dispute and why deal with all that? I also think handling it before it gets to this stage with a partial refund is the "right" thing to do if you're not going to make reshipping arrangements.
• You might also want to direct the buyer to this page so their address is updated for future purchases: Account Settings: Addresses