mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
As long as you refunded FROM their payment in PP, you will be just fine. I they do file a claim in the future, the partial refund would show and they would only be eligible for the balance. So ALWAYS make sure you refund directly from their original payment.
BTW, remember that as of the 11th, PP is no longer giving us fee credits on refunds. They are keeping all fees originally paid. So when you refund for shipping over payments [which I do as well] you should ALWAYS reduce the refund by the FVFs you won't be getting refunded in Ebay and the fees in PP that you won't be getting refunded as well. You don't have to lose money here. I don't and my buyers are fine. You just need to develop a polite and professional email to the buyer explaining what you are refunding and why.
@no_zero369 wrote:
@norskmediashop wrote:I have a question about this and maybe you can help, you stated: So when you refund for shipping over payments [which I do as well] you should ALWAYS reduce the refund by the FVFs you won't be getting refunded in Ebay and the fees in PP that you won't be getting refunded as well. You don't have to lose money here. I don't and my buyers are fine. You just need to develop a polite and professional email to the buyer explaining what you are refunding and why.
so since the new paypal no refund on fees back to seller policy went into place, we have had two requests for canceling an order that we normally never get, go figure...anyway, if we refund the order directly from paypal but withhold the paypal transaction fee from the refund can we get in trouble for doing that? and if we do it that way we dont get the FVF refunded by ebay for canceling the order right?
We had asked paypal if we can withhold the transaction fee, they outright said No... But if we cancel it through the ebay system they will get a complete refund and we will get the ebay FVF credit, but not the paypal fee credit. Yet if we do it through paypal,,,we wont get the ebay credit....so its like which way exactly are we suppose to do this now and not lose out completely on transaction fee money. We have complained bitterly to both paypal and ebay on this (I realize its not ebays policy but it kind of comes back to them). and puts us in argument with the seller as were just no open to canceling orders anymore after they are placed because of this. any help appreciated , thank you
While I know mam will provide an excellent answer, I have to comment.
IF a buyer requests that you cancel an order prior to shipping it is in your best interest to do so. The alternative is you "force" as sale and the buyer is upset, files a SNAD case and you lose even more money! So yeah, use the eBay process and cancel these orders.
Yes, canceling through eBay gets you a refund of the FVFs. The math is simple. Would you rather "get back" 2.9% plus 30-cents or a 10% refund of the FVFs? Your choice how you handle things. Make a business decision.
The other issue you have, loss of the PP fees is something many get excited about. First, this change brings online sellers in line with brick & mortar stores who have suffered such a 'loss' for years! So you had an advantage/loop hole, which has now closed! Now you are "on par" with the rest of the world.
Second, these PP fees are a business expense and as business owner you can choose to plan for such instances. So take the cost of the number of cancellations or returns one typically experiences in a year and divide that by your total sales or total sales plus canceled sales. That gives you a percentage which you use to raise your price by to cover the "cost" of these losses. Failure to plan for the loss of these fees is a plan to fail.
Sellers now have to factor in the occasional loss of these fees into their cost of doing business. At the very least 'tax' your sales for the percent of losses one would sustain per year and adjust you expected profit accordingly. Some will go so far as to set aside that 'tax' amount into a contingency fund to cover such losses when they happen. It is easier to sleep at night when you have a plan and funds in place to 'execute' that plan.
EXCELLENT reply. Well said!!!
No_zero gave you an excellent reply. I would just add that keep in mind that even by your own admission you don't regularly get cancellation requests from buyers. So if that holds true for you, this isn't likely to be a be hit to your bottom line. So that is a real positive.
For me. I'm just tracking everything over the next few months. Making notes for myself along the way in regards to anything that I can recover my costs on. That includes costs of returns. Especially the costs for items I normally would not have had to of eaten due to the way the current return system is on Ebay. Meaning we can't dispute return requests anymore even with proof that the buyer is trying to return something you didn't even sell them, Ebay will rule for the buyer. So I'm tracking all this.
Then in January when I have to raise my shipping rates due to the upcoming USPS rate increases, I will determine if I need to raise pricing overall on products I sell to help cover these extra expenses.
