Someone walk me through the Ebay return process

tightauldgit

Having a bit of a 'dispute' with ebay now and can't get any sense out of their CS. So can someone tell me if I've done something wrong or if Ebay have cocked up and are in denial mode? 

Couple of weeks back I sold something which arrived faulty. No big deal. I'll refund it and get it returned so I can check it - might be fixable not sure. Went to the Ebay return system and was presented with the usual options to do a partial refund or full refund or message the buyer or whatever. 

Clicked through and selected the option to accept the return and have Ebay issue the return label. Never done that before so didn't know what to expect - but clicked through and looked as if Ebay issued the refund. I didn't get any message to generate the label, pay for the label, or anything else which seemed weird but I just clicked through the process and left it assuming Ebay must know what they are doing. The buyer got refunded and the return was closed almost immediately. 

Roll on a few days and the buyer says they haven't got any label. So I waited a few days and still nothing and I've contacted Ebay today and asked whats going on. They don't seem to actually have their story straight on what's happened but basically saying i need to sort out the label myself now. Fair enough if I have to but I'd like to know what the hell happened, if I did anything wrong or if the system just cocked up. if the latter i'd like Ebay to take some responsibility for it. 

CS person initially said their system cocked up and they've escalated it to IT, then when I asked if they will offer any compensation for that changed her tune and said she'd checked and there was no error. Which is just blatant BS from them. I have no problem with accepting responsibility if I've messed up but I just followed the instructions on the screen and i don't really appreciate being flat out lied to by a CS person. 

Got it escalated to a CS supervisor and after waiting for about 10 minutes for him to read the story so far he asked me to repeat the whole story again, said that is how the return process works (!), said the label takes 5-10 minutes to generate but the return was closed after 4 minutes and when I asked him why that happened he disconnected! 

Ever so slightly livid after that experience - and still none the wiser as to what if anything i did wrong in the process. 

Any ideas?   

soolin

From a quick reading it sounds like you clicked on refund the buyer, and not on the return option.

Ebay do seem to favour the idea of refunding without the need for buyer to return, but it should have been very clear especially as you say you opted to refund. That would make sense with eBay now saying you need to send a label if you want your item back.

The refund will almost certainly have come from you, not eBay  and if I am correct in my understanding of the situation the case should now show as finished/completed or such like. That leaves you negotiating with buyer about paying to get your item returned. 

Most of what the CS reps on the phone say is wrong, they just want you off the phone and often blame a glitch, which is then denied should you question them about it later. 

tightauldgit

soolin said:

From a quick reading it sounds like you clicked on refund the buyer, and not on the return option.

Ebay do seem to favour the idea of refunding without the need for buyer to return, but it should have been very clear especially as you say you opted to refund. That would make sense with eBay now saying you need to send a label if you want your item back.

The refund will almost certainly have come from you, not eBay  and if I am correct in my understanding of the situation the case should now show as finished/completed or such like. That leaves you negotiating with buyer about paying to get your item returned. 

Most of what the CS reps on the phone say is wrong, they just want you off the phone and often blame a glitch, which is then denied should you question them about it later. 

The thing is I definitely selected the 'have Ebay provide the label' option and there were definitely other options for 'provide your own label' and 'let the buyer keep it' but once i selected it the thing just seemed to progress as if i hadn't asked for a return at all. 

This is the first time I ever actually did a return on an item that involved the buyer sending it so i had no idea what to expect and just followed what it told me to do. I wouldn't mind so much if Ebay could tell me what I did wrong but it's the dismissive attitude and outright dishonesty I'm a bit annoyed with now. 

I'd like to know at least what i did wrong so the next time i know how to do it properly but they just keep telling me to send a label to the buyer manually so they can return it - which wasn't really the question at that point. 

Buster_Danog

tightauldgit said:

I'd like to know at least what i did wrong so the next time i know how to do it properly but they just keep telling me to send a label to the buyer manually so they can return it - which wasn't really the question at that point. 

Without a screenshot its difficult to comment. I would also have chosen that option and expected to be charged the return postage. I have seen so many changes on ebay with their layout that it wouldn't surprise me if they had tinkered with the returns process as well.