Problem issuing a refund

[ctebay]

Hi–A buyer requested to cancel an order. Since Paypal now keeps fees, there wasn’t enough in my Paypal account to cover the refund (I usually transfer to zero out my account daily but still had this payment but now have to refund extra to cover Paypal keeping the fees). In the past, this wasn’t really an issue since it just went to Pending cancellation waiting for an e-check from my bank which cleared after a few days.

After some googling, I found out that Paypal/Ebay changed this in December and no longer allow bank e-checks.

Ok–so I thought I could just wait to get a payment from a new sale and then refund. I had sales and now have sufficient Paypal funds. But there is no longer anyway to refund the buyer on eBay.

There is a big banner across the cancel page saying “Please Refund the Buyer” but there is no longer any button or link to refund the buyer. When I click see details or open the order page, there is no button or link to refund the buyer anymore.

On Paypal, I can issue a refund. But eBay says I need to refund $9.20. But the buyer also paid sales tax which eBay is supposed to refund. I can issue a partial refund for $9.20 but I have no idea how to get eBay to refund the sales tax. Or I could eat the sales tax and issue a full refund and be out the sales tax also.

I e-mailed eBay yesterday and their reply today was useless. They talk about it being a return–which it is not–and say just to click refund. But there is no Refund button or link anymore!!!!

I remember seeing someone posted a link to facebook so I’ll probably either try their facebook support or just eat the sales tax and issue a full refund on Paypal to make this go away since it is low dollar.

I just thought I’d post to find out if anyone else has gone through this and knows how to resolve. Also a warning –don’t issue a cancellation until you have $$$ from more sales than just the one being cancelled. With Paypal keeping fees, it is impossible to cancel and have enough money from just that sale to cover the refund.

[ctebay]

Follow-up: after some back and forth with eBay on e-mail, I refunded on PayPal using a partial refund for the full amount that I needed to refund. After I did this, then the refund summary showed that eBay refunded the sales tax also. This just didn’t show up ahead of time. The eBay rep also said on the e-mail that my final value fee would be credited back, but that hasn’t happened yet so I may need to follow up again for this.

[Jay]

Why do you zero out your Paypal account each day? Obviously keeping some money there would eliminate this issue.

[Retro Treasures WV]

With my Hilton Amex, I get 3 points per dollar for all purchases, and 9 points per dollar for shipping purchases.
When I wasn’t a top rated seller I bought everything through pirateship. Once I got top rated seller back, ebay beats pirate ship on most priority mail shipments by at least 25 cents, so I went back. A month into it I checked my points accrual, I noticed I was only getting 3 points on ebay shipping because it was being classified as miscellaneous. Because the funds have to be filtered through paypal, it gets classified as miscellaneous instead of shipping. BOOOOO!!!!

It is still worth it because ebay is cheaper on priority, but I still do all 1st class through pirateship since they are the same price.

[ctebay]

By transferring the funds out, then my shipping costs go on my credit card which gives 1% cash back. This adds up over time

[Jay]

That’s right. I forgot people were doing this. I guess if you empty your account each day, then there’s just a risk if you need to refund.

I wonder whats going to happen when we all move to Managed Payments. Where does shipping costs come from?

[ctebay]

It didn’t used to be a risk. Last year, this would just trigger a e-check from linked bank account. But for an unknown reason, this was changed at end of last year.

I don’t know what will happen with managed payments. eBay lets fees be charged to credit card now so maybe this will apply to shipping costs also????

[Timo]

I got an email from Paypal in late March stating that they would not be keeping their transaction fees when processing a refund. Due to COVID-19. This was only good thru April 30 though. So this expired yesterday. (Hope they extend it.)

[ctebay]

Huh… not sure why the refund I issued initially didn’t go through then. I had the money from the sale that was to be cancelled in Paypal. The buyer requested the cancellation and I cancelled/refunded within minutes–that money from the cancelled sale should have matched the amount needed for the refund if Paypal wasn’t holding onto its fee.

Anyway, the e-mail support worked and I even got my final value fee credited back.

[Timo]

@ctebay:
“The cost of each payment received through PayPal is 2.9% plus US$0.30 for sales within the US.”

And they have always kept that 30 cents when refunding. So if your Paypal account is really empty, that would be enough to cause the problem you described.

[Timo]

I had a purchase today where a partial refund for overpaid shipping was necessary. Paypal gave up their fee on the refund. So they are still doing this to help sellers during the pandemic.

While issuing the refund, there was a sentence on their web interface that stated they were doing this thru April 30, but all of this occurred on May 2, so it seems they are extending it.

[ChristineR]

I had this problem this week too, though I do have money in my Paypal account. The issue was that I had refunded partially because the buyer purchased multiple items before she asked to cancel. So I guess I will have to refund the rest in Paypal.

[Timo]

If you cannot refund because you are $1 or $2 short on Paypal funds, perhaps you can get someone to send you money using Paypal “Send Money to a Friend”. No fees for these transfers.

I sell some things for my son “on consignment” and use that to send him the proceeds.

[Author]

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