My question is who pays the refunds on items not received?
I recently purchased an item wich I did not realise was from Canada
I purchased the item on Oct 4 up to this date 13 Nov I have not received it
Upon enquiring about item not received I said to the seller that I wanted the item and as I had slow shipping from Canada before I was prepared to wait and see if it turned up seller replied that it had been sent airmail
This was sent last night .
This morning I received an E Mail from eBay that a refund had been made .
What happens now if I get the item I will have to go back to the seller and pay the money back wich is a hassle
This happened to me a few years ago when I tried to pay the seller again he had blocked me and there was no way to contact him
As I had not requested a refund did eBay jump the gun or did the seller give it to me
Piko

I'm not entirely sure how it works on the seller side but I believe if ebay's refund policy time period is getting close and there is no evidence of tracking or delivery than a refund is issued.

If a seller wishes to continue being a seller I would think ebay adds the refund costs to their monthly operation bill.

This is why we are seeing $20 international shipping fees for a stupid card.

In the very small amount of cases where the card showed up after the refund I just paid the seller. If they blocked me then they lost a customer. It's not like I'm running a crime spree of reporting non deliveries so I can get refunds.

I believe a seller has to provide eBay with a Bank account now. So whenever you reach some trigger benchmark eBay just automatically processes a transaction to the Bank account. The seller can fight it out with them if they dispute anything.

I'm not sure a buyer can even waive the refund if they want to wait it out, but know that if you do and the item never comes, the time period to make a claim will have passed and you will be out your money.

Was the item sent using a tracked service? If it isn't and it's standard mail then ebay won't know if you've received the item and nor will the seller.
If they've refunded you, then they would appear to be content to refund you and chase up a postage refund themselves.
You can try to contact them if the item does eventually show up, but if you can't contact them then you can't do more about it.
If it's tracked that's another matter, but again, if you're unable to contact them it's not your fault.

Is it my imagination, or are you having a terrible run of bad luck with postage these past couple of months? Hope that luck changes for you.
No international postage is that great these days, (currently the sluggishness of USPS make Royal Mail look fantastic ), and the next month or so will be worse with the Christmas overload....well, that's the excuse that will be used, no doubt.

I think you're going to receive the item. It's just going to take more time. USPS is even slower than usual now and it's going to get slower in the next few weeks as HW noted.

This is why some US sellers don't ship overseas anymore. A buyer has to apply for a refund within 21 days of payment or risk not being able to get it. If the item doesn't arrive within 14 days, a buyer often gets nervous and contacts Ebay. At that point, Ebay might grant the refund right away rather than wait a few more days for notice from the buyer. Sometimes, a package arrives in about a week but it has often taken 3-4 weeks and that was before COVID and the added slowdown. The seller is then out the money and the item. Imagine that hassle.

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
My question is who pays the refunds on items not received?
I recently purchased an item wich I did not realise was from Canada
I purchased the item on Oct 4 up to this date 13 Nov I have not received it
Upon enquiring about item not received I said to the seller that I wanted the item and as I had slow shipping from Canada before I was prepared to wait and see if it turned up seller replied that it had been sent airmail
This was sent last night .
This morning I received an E Mail from eBay that a refund had been made .
What happens now if I get the item I will have to go back to the seller and pay the money back wich is a hassle
This happened to me a few years ago when I tried to pay the seller again he had blocked me and there was no way to contact him
As I had not requested a refund did eBay jump the gun or did the seller give it to me
Piko

This is why I NEVER sell anything outside the USA on E-Bay anymore.
It's hard enough just to LIST an item now with all their new particulars.
As for the USPS, I live about 45 miles away from a certain small press publisher. Every time I buy a book from them, it is shipped south out of state, then north, then to my local post office, a distance of 360 miles. Even my mail lady can't understand why they do that. I know they use their established mail routes, but it still seems like an enormous waste of time and manpower (or peoplepower, if you prefer).

Yeah, it used to be easy to list an item but now it's a tangle of boxes to fill out, and an hour later (or more) when you think you're done, you get a message that says you did something wrong. There's no obvious way to select "free shipping." You have to poke around to find that. My brother learned that when he wanted to list some stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by cardaddict:
This is why I NEVER sell anything outside the USA on E-Bay anymore.
It's hard enough just to LIST an item now with all their new particulars.
As for the USPS, I live about 45 miles away from a certain small press publisher. Every time I buy a book from them, it is shipped south out of state, then north, then to my local post office, a distance of 360 miles. Even my mail lady can't understand why they do that. I know they use their established mail routes, but it still seems like an enormous waste of time and manpower (or peoplepower, if you prefer).