Are refunds frowned upon by PayPal?

[purplestevie]

Basically tos expect you to know the correct p&p so you dont need to refund your buyers. I refund buyers a lot including on TOS and havent received any defects yet because of it.
Managing to bring a few tos customers here to ebid lets hope i can continue to do that.

[thebeddingman]

That is all well and good, but many postage and other discounts over there only work if you use the basket, and most customers either do not know this, or use an app that does not have a basket, just the buy it now button. As such buyers are regularly overcharged. Of course TOS don't care, because they get their fees if you do a partial refund as you get charged a FVF on everything and get nothing back. Chuck in their defective defect system, and many sellers are no longer refunding any overpaid postage at all.

Plus, if you factor in things like that into the fees as a percentage of sales value, chuck in PayPal keeping 20p if you do a full refund, and then add on the additional costs of managed returns, many Ebay sales are now actually a fraction more expensive than they would be on the River.

Ebid need to get the API fully operational and fast plus more automation for larger sellers though, as much more competition is coming in the form of Alibaba and next year, OnBuy, and this site should be booming in the current situation, but appears to be in decline.

[kreativebargains]

Things may change even more with regards to the eBay/Paypal relationship. I was reading in the financial pages the other day that they are splitting into separate companies. Only time will tell how that affect relationships between them and between Paypal and the likes of eBid.

[purplestevie]

I assume paypal is the favourite payment option for most buyers i havent really explored other payments options

[squern]

Good grief so TOS are now penalizing sellers for being fair to their customers ? That is disgraceful ! No problems with refunding customers here on eBid this is a great site to use.

I believe you also get a defect if you contact the customer.
You may want to query a delivery address, or ask if they want a different postal service, or tell them you are going to refund excess postage.

If you do, you get a defect.

Isn't it great to be here, and not there!!!

[emmily121]

I believe you also get a defect if you contact the customer.
You may want to query a delivery address, or ask if they want a different postal service, or tell them you are going to refund excess postage.

If you do, you get a defect.

Isn't it great to be here, and not there!!!

Squern, I think you're getting a little confused with automatic 5 star rating for Communication on TOS, this comes under, you couldn't make it up...if there's no communication between seller and buyer prior to sale, and seller has 1 day dispatch in their listing, and marks item as dispatched within 1 day then the seller gets an automatic 5 star rating for Communication...

This is what sellers on TOS get defects for
The following transaction-related defects affect your defect rate and seller status:

• Detailed seller rating of 1, 2 or 3 for item as described
• Detailed seller rating of 1 for shipping time
• Negative or neutral feedback
• Return initiated for a reason that indicates the item was not as described
• eBay Money Back Guarantee (previously known as eBay Buyer Protection) or PayPal Purchase Protection case opened for an item not received or an item not as described
• Seller-cancelled transactions
• Starting with the August 20 evaluation, to meet eBay's minimum standard, sellers can have up to a maximum 5% of transactions with one or more transaction defects over the most recent evaluation period. A maximum 2% will allow a seller to qualify as an eBay Top Rated Seller. Only transactions with UK buyers count.

But what makes it worse is that buyers just asking a simple question inadvertently open a case, which *rewards* the seller with a defect, unless buyers know that to avoid a seller getting a defect by using 'Other' to ask a question.

Just rolling in now on TOS is Managed Returns, whereby seller is charged for return postage for items that are returned to them by the buyer, and the cost of the return postage will probably be more than the seller originally paid to send the item.

All this, and more, is why so many ebay sellers are turning up here on eBid, good luck to them all, I hope they keep coming, and learn how to sell here.

[squern]

I probably am confused - I'm guessing that a lot of eBayers (and exes) are.

I'm so glad that I walked away from all that nonsense last year, and don't really understand why people put up with it.

Maybe sales are good, but is it really worth all the angst and aggravation.

I'm currently looking at Skrill as an alternative to Paypal - it seems that Paypal have a similar kamikaze business plan to eBay, and I want to be ready when they are overtaken by a reasonable company.

Bit like eBid and eBay, really.

[purplestevie]

think i will have a look at skrill too

[FatSpider]

I've had no problems refunding via paypal and I don't give a damn what ebay think of me refunding on postage, contacting buyers etc etc

I only list when they offer free listing periods anyway, if it doesn't sell it hasn't cost me anything and that 30p I saved will probably cover what I lose out on with refunds

EDIT: I should also add that I don't think buyers take much notice of seller ratings as they tend to look for those with 100% positive feedback.