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Maybe I’m missing something, and I realize it’s faster for the buyer, but if you pay attention to things and respond relatively quickly, is there any advantage to having automatic returns turned on? I am guessing that if a buyer wants to return something, you quickly get an email with a button you push if you want to have them generate a shipping label on your dime. But sometimes I’d just rather refund the buyer without giving them the option to ship it back to me. I recently had a guy receive a computer power supply that I thought worked, he said it didn’t, I trusted him and refunded him and told him not to ship it but he shipped it anyway – so I was out the additional $10 or whatever to ship it. So if I can determine when a shipping label is made, I feel that would be better.
We do have the ability to turn off eGD returns automatically – and so I was going to try it and see what happened, but I thought I’d ask first if I’m making a mistake by doing that. If anybody is wondering, I stumbled upon it twice, it’s under Return Preferences/return rules. If you have automatic returns (which many of us do), there is a rule that you can turn on or off. I don’t know what happens when it’s turned off, so I’m also clicking the RMA button, hoping that gives me the option to send or not to send a return label.
Just curious, no worries. Thanks
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eGD are eBay Guaranteed Deliveries. In my return preferences it’s the only thing that I have as automatically turned on. I don’t have any return rules, though I see that I could make some. I just wanted to turn them off, which I think will let me decide how to handle returns. I don’t have that many, so I don’t feel it will be a big deal, but I just wasn’t sure. We’ll see I guess (lesson #8432).
Thanks
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I am confused, I thought having “Free Returns” meant you hand out free return shipping no matter what – “change of mind” included / no questions asked sort of thing. How is this then different from regular “30 days – Buyer pays return shipping”?
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I don’t think I’m changing the option of free return shipping no matter what – that is still there. I just want the option to refund the buyer and end it first – so that we don’t pay the post office to return something that is broken or worthless. So all I’m hoping to do is take the label issuing out of the hands of eBay and put it in my hands. I have to do it quickly I assume, otherwise I’ll be in trouble and have to go to the principals office, but I’m OK with that, I’ll do it on time no worries. Time will tell. I turned it off, whatever that means, so I’m now just waiting (not anticipating, hopefully waiting a long time) to see what happens next return. It’s the only return rule I currently have, and it was generated by eBay, not by me as I had no clue what eGD was.
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When a buyer says we’ve done something wrong, we like the buyer to send photos. if its an obvious mistake we made, we also do an immediate refund.
Otherwise, we like the buyer to return the item. Often its a bogus return and the buyer never mails it back. They’re just fishing for a partial refund.
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Sorry to barge in on gfd_622’s original conversation, but I’m still not on the same page regarding the returns.
My understanding was, Free Returns = seller pays return shipping, no matter the reason of the return.
I thought that was the whole point of this setting and the reason why sellers also get some benefits for this policy that’s even more generous than Amazon’s.
Because otherwise, the regular “(buyer pays return shipping)” would be the same thing. Buyer pays if they change their mind, seller pays if the messed up (=INAD).
This is why I still jump between Free Returns and regular Buyer Pays on different listings, depending on how I want to “encourage” the buyer to behave. This is not really a tactic against scammers, just regular people.
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I answered your other comment above. I made it more clear since I had an error. Does the below make sense?
Free Returns means the seller pays return shipping.
–If a buyer just changes their mind and wants to return the item, the seller pays for return shipping, but eats the cost to ship it to them.
–If a buyers says the Seller did something wrong, the seller pays both ways.
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Sorry, I think we are all saying the same thing, it’s just simply that we are using different words and saying it differently. I’m not saying to turn off free returns, I’m all for that. What I want to do is turn off the automatic free labels that eBay generates when a buyer asks for a return. I want the buyer to contact me. I will give them the label that I pay for, if I want the item back. If I don’t want the item back, I’ll just refund them 100%, no questions asked. That way they don’t mail me back something that is broken that has no value. Why waste the extra postage. I’d just throw it away when I receive it, so I’d rather not have it shipped to me. If I want them to return the item, I’ll pay for and send them a label to ship the item back to me. Once I get the item back, I’ll refund them and simply relist the item.
As I mentioned, what started this was selling a power supply that I thought worked, but didn’t. eBay automatically generated the label that I paid for. I refunded the person instantly, hoping he wouldn’t send it back to me, but he did. So it cost me an extra $10 or so to ship a broken item to me. I’d of preferred to not have the label generated, as it was silly to do.
And like Jay mentioned earlier, most of the time for me this ends up in a mute point, as most of them simply don’t return the item, and then case closed. I have a guy right now who bought a golf club from me, realized it wasn’t the same as his set (he didn’t read the title, it clearly stated what it was), and so he just wanted a refund. He has a label, I’m waiting for him to send it, but he still hasn’t. I’m not refunding him until I receive the club back. I can easily relist and sell, but he has to mail it to me first. I paid for the return label.
I have free returns on all of my items that I have listed in the past 6 months (so not all, I still have some old items that I have not updated, but many). I don’t have a problem with it, it hasn’t increased my returns, but I’m just trying to figure out all the details of how returns work and how refunds work.
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I was only mystified by your very first reply, Jay, where you say: “We have Automatic Returns turned on if the buyer has just changed their mind. They agree to pay the shipping.” This vs the concept of “Free Returns” is what I didn’t understand.
And yeah, I guess it would be nice to decide whether to issue return labels or not. Thankfully, I do not deal with many returns and when I do, it’s mostly scam artists.
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Yeah, my first comment was wrong/confusing. For us, if someone just changed their mind, we’re happy to take the return without out hassle. No need for manual approval.
We do lose money on Free Returns, but its really minimal. Maybe $20 a month? I was worried it’d be much more. Really not sure if Free Returns benefits us much, but it certainly doesnt hurt.
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That’s interesting that for Guaranteed Delivery you can turn off automatic acceptance of returns but you can’t do that if you don’t use GD (unless you want to use RMA #’s (or pretend to)). I wonder whether, if you use RMA #’s, you get the option (like you used to do for every return) of just letting buyer keep the item or offering a partial refund. So many different feature/option combinations to try to keep track of. :\
At any rate, when I used to have NON-automated returns, it worked fine. No issues with sales or buyers. In case that helps the OP.
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As far as my experience goes, its not even possible to disable automatic returns any longer.
I had setup a rule to disable automatic returns, all of my returns were still automatically approved any way.
This was a problem for me because I was having multiple buyers falsely select “Item not as described” when they clearly just didn’t want to pay return shipping.
I called ebay several times about this. Reps wouldn’t help me on this issue at all. One rep told me to delete my return rule and this would fix it. Big surprise, that didn’t fix it. I never got any answers from any reps regarding why I can’t disable. I’m pretty sure I remember a while back that it wasn’t possible to disable, only possible to add RMA option.
Additionally, ebay will not help you as a seller with INAD returns any longer until you receive the actual item – even if its 100% clear that the buyer has selected a false return reason. And then when I follow up after receiving the item, it usually takes multiple calls to actually resolve the issue & even then the ebay reps act like they are doing me a “one time favor”.
Ebay’s customer service has gotten continually worse for me over the last 6 months, and I am always very nice to them
The last time I had to call about this issue, the ebay rep told me I had to file a report with my local police department 😀
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It is true that eBay doesn’t do anything till a return item is delivered. Why? Because many grumpy buyers complain but never ship. Happens more times than not for us.
Then when we do get the item back, we can deal with the issue. And often returns are all different for different reasons. We have to judge them on their merits.
Being in the Free Returns is good because it allows us to choose how much to refund. If the buyer disputes our choice, eBay backs us up. They have removed two negatives recently without any fuss. I’m sure if they saw we abused the program, they’d punish us. But we only refund less than full when a buyer is clearly abusing the system.
We havent noticed eBay customer getting worse. About the same as its always been. Hit or miss.
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I’m pretty sure you also get a higher level of customer service being an anchor store. I’m on the 500 listings plan currently
As I’ve mentioned before, I have many years callcenter experience including outsourced centers like ebay uses, and my experiences with ebay’s customer service mostly reflects my working experience with these call centers, which is not great…
Like I said, the last ebay rep I had to call told me they were going to send me an email in order to resolve a bad return, and they sent me instructions to file a report with the local police department.
This was regarding a drinking glass that buyer claimed held only 8oz instead of 9oz (and it held 9.5oz measured accurately). So ebay’s response to buyer returning a $8 glass while lying about INAD was for me to call the police. Buyer had 5 feedback, I’ve got over a thousand plus over a year of paying hundreds of dollars to ebay every month…. Not good service.
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Understood. I honestly dont know if Anchor support is any better, or really even different people. We get plenty of reps who are totally unhelpful and uninformed. We just hang up and call back to hopefully get a better person.
Sone returns are stupid, annoying, and even fell like theft. But we do have to remember we’re running a business. There will be loss or “shrinkage”. Going to war over $8 doesnt seem worth it in the big picture.
I remember when we sold on Amazon for a year. Buyers would return things for any reason and get all their money back. Amazon wouldnt even try to look at the case. They would say “We appreciate you taking a loss knowing you’ll make it up in volume.” Amazon returns hurt a lot because there were a lot of returns that were expensive because sent back used.
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I understand what you’re saying, but I’m still barely surviving financially so every sale counts to me… I’m not willing to take an $8 hit when ebay should have my back, and it shouldn’t be an issue I have to call 4+ times about. Plus when you add original shipping + return shipping, that becomes around $25
When I worked callcenter, there were definitely tiers of service reps reserved for different levels of customers. The more money the company made from the customer, the higher level of agent they would be routed to.
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