Return – Do You Offer Partial Refund?

[ssmantua]

When buyer asks for return, do you offer partial refund or just accept return?

buyer wanted to return shoes since it was just little tight, I offered generous partial refund but thry sat on it for few weeks and today got the message that they open a case and ebay closed in a buyers favor, with me paying for return shipping 🙁

Am I going to get defect? seems like if I had accepted a return without partial offer, I would have avoided return shipping and poseible defect.

what’s your experience or thoughts?

[Jay]

Yep, we always accept the return. Since you didn’t accept the return, eBay did it for you.

In this case, the buyer says it was too tight so it was buyer’s remorse. The buyer would have paid all the shipping costs. A partial refund doesnt make sense because the buyer said the shoes don’t fit so they dont want them at any price.

[Anonymous]

With one exception I have never done a partial refund (since 1999). We just tell them we want them to be 100% satisfied and please open a return and we will accept the return. So far about 75% of the buyers never return the item.

The partial return we did do once was a race-car model replica that had one damaged wheel in shipment and he supplied photos. How it got damaged was a mystery because I am a great packer and I suspect he removed a wheel to make it appear damaged — but I didn’t feel like a debate with him that day!

I also post everything I sell with a 20% restocking fee, but I waive that if something is a return due to wrong size (like shoes) and everything is smooth.

[sonia]

ssmantua,
I am very curious: how did you offer the partial refund? Did you offer it via ebay messages? Or did you offer it via the “partial refund” option in ebay’s return process? If you offered it via the ebay return process, then the buyer should not be able to open a case against you and I would try to get this appealed. They should have just rejected the offer and then you would be prompted to take the next step of accepting the return. But I’m guessing that you offered it via a regular ebay message – am I right?

Re: returns for fit, I recently offered a small partial refund when someone said that the shoes didn’t fit, and they accepted that. I don’t know why, and I doubt it would happen often, but it did happen.

[Tina F]

I always give the buyer a choice. I write “I can offer you a partial refund of XX dollar if you would like to keep the item or a refund less shipping and restocking fees if you would like to ship it back. Please let me know how you would like to proceed” However for fit reasons they will never take the partial refund. They just cant use it…

[Jay]

But if a buyer opens a return case, we always approve the return. If you just send a message about partial refunds, the return case is still open. The customer can make the choice, but eBay will step in and refund the buyer’s money if you don’t approve the return.

[Inglewood]

My experience is once you approve the return, a good portion (say 50-60%) of buyers never bother to return the item, especially on lower priced items.

Once they add up the shipping lost both directions, they decide it isn’t worth it to them or just are too lazy to mail the item back.

[Temudgin]

I only offer a partial refund if the buyer messages me without opening a case and I feel it’s appropriate to even answer and offer a partial refund in that case (rarely – if they don’t open a case they often are just fishing). If someone opens a case to return the item, I approve it immediately and I don’t offer a partial refund. If we’ve been emailing back and forth about a partial refund but they then open a case, I just approve the return as soon as the case is opened. As others have said, the buyer often never follows through. You should have received a notification of the opened case (possibly even a couple notifications if you did not respond) – once you get that, you’ve got to move on it. Yes you’ll get a “transaction defect” if eBay has closed it in buyer’s favor but it’s not the end of world. You’ll not get kicked off eBay for that alone. In my case (I don’t know if it differs as to size of store etc), I can have up to 0.50% transaction defects and not lose Top Rated Seller status, and it’s not until the defect rate reaches over 2.0% that I fall into “Below Standard” seller status.

[Author]

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