Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper discuss what to do if a buyer has your item and your money after a refund request.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Rob & Melissa
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are talking about what happens if the buyer ends up with the item and the money and the transaction that you sold on eBay. So stay tuned!
Melissa: All right.
So we're going to dive into what happens if the buyer gets the item and then also gets the money at the same time and doesn't return the item. What do you do?
Rob: That's right. We just had this happen recently. We sold an item. It took too long for that item to reach the buyer. So it was a freight shipment.
This is not a small item. This was a $700 transaction. So we shipped it. It was not our fault. It was not the buyer's fault, but, he asked for a refund because it took too long to get the item, which I totally understand it. This was the instance though. So we gave him a refund and then he received the item three days later and he's gotten the item which he accepted and he's got the refund.
So what do you do in that situation? So we're going to dive in.
Melissa: Before we dive into what we did in the situation, it's good to note that all transactions are different. So what works for something might not work for the other thing, but you just have to look at it. If something happens and some of them— problemsolving, yes, problemsolving. Something, somebody asks for a return, you have to look at it, okay. As a sleuth, don't get upset. Like you don't know what the problem is. It could be a shipping damage. It could be a lot of different things. So we just kind of take it as it goes. So we're going to unpack what we did in this situation to get our money back from eBay. And like you said, it was $700. It was not a little transaction.
Rob: But be a problem solver, make it into a game.
I know that's hard to say when you have money tied up in it, but one way or another I knew we were going to get the money back. I was either going to fight the freight company because they took too long to deliver it. The guy, I, I understand, that's why I gave the guy a refund. He opened a case, after I think it was like, 20, 25 days, he didn't receive the item.
Melissa: Which is totally understandable.
Rob: Really! It, it is not his fault. It's not my fault. I shipped it out when I was supposed to, but the freight company got backed up at one of their terminals and it got stuck at that terminal. So I totally understand it and that's why before I gave him the refund, I called eBay up. So that's the first point.
Melissa: It is the first point.
But before that happened, he had messaged you and said, look, if I don't get this by Monday, which was like the 30th day or something. Yeah. I really need, I got to get a refund because I can't use this item. I need it by Monday. Well, it was still at another location states away. It wasn't going anywhere.
It'd been sitting there for a long time. Right? Yeah. For three weeks. So it's like, well, I'm, don't think he's going to get it on Monday. So we waited until Monday when his, his last day and he didn't receive it.
Rob: So, and he actually waited probably two or three days after that. And then he opened the case with eBay, to say that he hadn't received the item.
Melissa: Yeah. So that was the case that he opened. So we got the open case.
Yeah, after we got the open case, they give you, I think it's two or three days to respond to back. Excuse me, in that timeframe, I actually called up eBay and I said, listen, I don't know what to do. This is not my problem. It's not my fault.
Rob: And it's not his fault. It's actually the freight company's fault. You guys have a tracking number. We have a tracking number. You can see where it's sitting. It's in Salt Lake City, Utah, and we're in Florida and he's up in Westford or Washington, and it is far from us. Exactly. I don't want to screw the buyer because it's not his fault.
So what do I do in this instance? And they said, well, you need to really refund the buyer because it has taken too long to get him his item. And then, excuse me, go after the freight company, you're going to have to go after the freight company in that instance. So I said, okay. I waited as long as I possibly could.
I refunded the buyer, his money. And then three days later he signed and received the items. So not only does he have the item, he already got his refund back for the item. So, he got it for free.
Melissa: He did say that he was going to refuse it. So that was his thing, when he said, if it doesn't get here by Monday, I'm going to refuse the item, which is understandable. Like he totally understood that. I mean, that's a long time to wait for your item. So calling eBay, asking them that was the first thing and get actually, before you even call them getting on the phone, a lot of people don't want to do it. Get on the phone, don't just do the chat. You don't show your emotion. You don't show you're a real person by the chat. So I am one that likes to default to chat. Like I hate being on the phone. I really don't like it, but it makes a big difference when you're actually, they can hear your voice. They can hear like, you just want to do the right thing.
You're trying to make the most or the best of the situation. And they want to work with you. They do want to work with their sellers. I know it's not a popular belief out there that eBay. eBay wants to screw their sellers is what everybody thinks. But yeah, sometimes they do not back the seller, but a lot of times they don't want, they want you sellers.
They want you on the platform.
Rob: You're making them money. So they do want to make you happy. Sometimes it doesn't work out in our favor. The majority of the time it really does. They want to try and make you happy and they want to do the right thing. They do not want to do the wrong thing. In this instance they did.
So that's where we were at. The buyer ended up with the item three days after I refunded him his money. And that's where I called up eBay and I said, listen, I did the right thing here. The buyer was supposed to reject the item or refuse the item. He did not do that. He accepted it. They have a signature that he accepted it.
What do I do from here? This is very, very important with eBay. You're going to get, they have probably thousands of representatives. You're going to get some representatives who don't know exactly how to handle this situation. And then you're going to get some that are very, very good and they know what to do.
The first one that I got was very, very good. He knew what to do. He goes well, since you did not force eBay to make a decision on this, you actually refunded it without the decision. We don't have a place to appeal this. We can't go back and appeal it. So I said, wait a minute. If I made you force me to give the refund.
I, I, I was in the right. I mean, I was in the right thing to do.
Melissa: And they also told you to do.
Rob: Exactly. And I said, I, I understand that it's, it's in the right. This is the right thing to do. So, but if I would've waited and forced you to do it, which that's the wrong thing to do, I knew that this was the wrong thing to do.
I knew that I should just give him a refund. Yeah. Then the appeal would have been an option and you guys could have gotten my money back and they said, yes, that's how it goes. That's, that's how the whole thing plays out. I said, that's not acceptable. We got to figure something out of here. And he goes, okay, well, I can get to my manager or my supervisor in the back office.
And he should be able to put in, it could take up to 15 days, I think he said.
Melissa: He had a manual override.
Rob: Exactly. It was a manual override that he could put in for a refund. And then I think eBay was the one who was going to have to eat it, so.
Melissa: Or go after the buyer who had the item too.
Rob: Exactly. But they don't have anything in the new managed payment system to handle something like this.
So I'm pretty sure eBay ate it. And I don't know if they went after the buyer or not, or they just ate it out of their profits.
Melissa: Back when it was PayPal, it was an easy reversible.
Well, it was easy. Anytime you could show a thing was delivered. It doesn't matter when it was delivered. You could go back and PayPal would reverse the funds, even if you refunded the money, whatever the reason was, PayPal was a little bit different.
Rob: So they could do that, while eBay's having more problems. Exactly.
Melissa: They're still figuring out managed payments, but our last couple things have worked out. So yeah, I think they're getting a handle on working with their buyers and sellers in the payments department.
Rob: So that was how I left it. Another good note here. If you do not get the right person, you can always go to supervisor.
If they are not understanding what you're saying, and you know, what you're doing is the right thing, then ask to speak to a supervisor. Get somebody who's higher up this one, the guy told me, hey, I can get it to a supervisor. I can make sure that he will be able to reverse. It could take up to 15 days.
I said, okay, I'm okay with that. Please give me your name. I got his name, rep ID, any of that stuff that you can get to make notes of that. A couple days later, I called and I said, okay, what's going on with this? I spoke to Eric was the guy's name. I spoke to Eric a couple of days ago. He told me that he would have this reversed and he looks at the, the whole thing and he says, yeah, sorry, we can't do an appeal on this.
There's nothing we can really do. I said, listen, I talked to Eric, he told me he couldn't do an appeal, but a supervisor could override this and I could get my money back. And he goes, ah, I've never even heard of that. I don't really know what you're talking about. I see in the notes that you did speak to Eric, let me put a personal message into him.
Hold on a few minutes. He's in this office. Let me see if he'll respond back. He did not respond back. So he said, listen, I put a message into him to actually reach out to you. Well, later that day, the same day that I talked to this guy, he had Eric reach out and Eric said, hey I just got it to a supervisor and they're going to reverse it and give you the it actually ended up being like $615 because eBay's fee was in that as well. So it was a $700 sale, but their fee, they only were giving me back $650. So I got that email from Eric that, hey I got this to a supervisor. They said they will have this done in 48 hours, not 15 days. So the supervisor reversed it and I got my money back within, I think it was 48 hours.
The money went back into my bank account which is awesome. So the moral of the story is eBay is not out to hurt people, hurt sellers. They want to do the right thing. Sometimes you just have to get to the right representative, but always get them on the phone. Always talk to a representative, maybe even a supervisor, if you have to get them on the phone so you can get to the right result that you actually need.
Melissa: And getting them on the phone. So how do we get them on the phone? So one of the best ways to do it is to go to their website. You usually see an option for a chat pretty easily. You might have to click through a couple of screens and go to the, like, whatever department your issue is in and try to find that department and just look and see, or it says, we'll call you and then they have your number.
Or did you enter your number? Or I know they have your number and they call you. You might have to enter your number again to call you on.
Rob: And then they'll just call you on that.
Melissa: So they'll call your number.
Rob: And they'll tell you how long. So if it's a 10 minute, wait, if it's a five minute wait, usually they'll say somebody will call you in five minutes and then they'll actually call you and get you on the phone.
Melissa: And we've waited a little while before, but most of the time they call back.
Rob: It's one to two minutes typically.
Melissa: Most of the time they call really quickly. And so they will call you and then you can ask them, if you have a question, that's one of the biggest things is the first thing we did with this was ask them, what would you do in this situation?
What is the, you know, and they told us, well, this is the right thing to do by the buyer, which we knew. But you always want to ask them because they told us that, and we did that and listened then that helped our situation.
Rob: Yeah. And that's the one thing that I told, not the first rep who told me to give the refund to the buyer.
But the second rep, when I had the issues and it was delivered, that's what I told him. I said, you guys told me to do the right thing. He's like, yeah, you did the right thing. Absolutely. And I said, I know that. That's why I did it. He said, but I told him, I shouldn't be penalized for this doing the right thing.
Now you guys can clearly see it's delivered. He's got the item and he's got his money back. So we got to figure out how to work this out. But the moral is definitely, you might not get to the right representative who knows this because the third representative that I got to had no idea that this was even a possibility.
But then he figured it out by talking to the other rep who probably been all with eBay for a lot longer and had experienced something like this. So don't just take a no one time if somebody gives you an answer that you know is not legit, it's not right. Work around it. Get to another rep. Hang up the phone and call them back or whatever you have to do or get back onto the chat.
But typically it's just to call it, have them call. Exactly. If you're chatting with them through email or through response, I'm telling you, you will not get stuff done that way. You really have to get them on the phone so you can talk it out with them and show them your passion. That's what you really, really need to do to get results.
Melissa: And you can tell usually once you get on the phone with them, if it's a representative that really knows their stuff and has been around a while. Or if it's somebody that's just knows what the handbook says and that's all they can keep replying back to you. And I think the biggest thing when you first start also is to be polite.
So absolutely. Just be polite to them and if they're not the right person to talk to you, you can tell that you're not getting anywhere. Then ask for a supervisor.
Rob: I've done that before on the phone as well. I'm like, do you have the authority to reverse this? And they've said, no, I don't. Okay. I'm talking to the wrong person.
Let me speak to your supervisor, please forward me to your supervisor. And they say, okay, give me a minute. Let me see if I can get a supervisor. And then I get to the supervisor and I give them the whole story. Do you have the authority to reverse this? Oh yeah, I have the authority, but I'm not going to do it or whatever it is you want to get to the right person to get the outcome that you need to.
And sometimes it's not the first rep. Sometimes it's not the supervisor. Sometimes it's their supervisor. So I've gone, I think, three up before and got to the right person to get the outcome that you need to. But the biggest thing is getting them on the phone. That's what most people will not do. If you do that and you're not doing anything wrong in your situation, you should be able to be taken care of by eBay.
They want to help the sellers. They don't, they're not out to screw us. We're the ones who really pay them. We pay them by the sale and they get a commission on that. So, that's definitely a good thing to remember. And that's, I'm, I'm telling you, I think that's what they know as well. And that's why they're trying to work with us to get the outcome that we need to get if we're doing the right thing.
Melissa: And one thing to note is to get the rep ID and, and their name. And when you're talking to them, that helps them say, you know, the last person, whoever I talked to last, and if you can get the rep ID, usually you just get one or the other don't you? Or do you ask for the rep ID?
Rob: Typically, they'll tell you their name when they pick up the phone.
So if you don't know, if you make a, either a mental note or write it down. Have a piece of paper with you and start take notes on the conversation because eBay's recording it. So they have it, but at the same time, you want to be able to recall it. That's exactly what I did.
Melissa: Yeah. And then that should be in the notes too.
So, and you can ask them to refer back to the notes.
Rob: Typically that's what they do. They'll make notes on the phone call that they, that they take anything that they do during the phone call. They'll put notes in there of that. So, you do have a record of it or they should have a record of it. And you, but when you're on your side saying, hey, you know, Eric said this that's all I had to do to the third rep is Eric said this, that it was going to get taken care of.
And I don't think Eric really did it until the third rep reached back out to him. And then he's like, shoot, I didn't do that. I need to do it now. He did it, he got it done. 48 hours. We got our money back into the account. So, and like I said, I think eBay ate the money. I don't and I don't really care where it came from.
As long as we got our money, the guy got his item. I don't really care, but I honestly believe eBay.
Melissa: Did the right thing if they got their money from the buyer.
Rob: Absolutely. But I don't know if the whole managed payment system works out that way, that they can pull the money back out of his account once, once it's refunded.
Yeah. Like PayPal, they see the delivery. And then yeah, they, they reverse it right away. But so I don't really know who the money came from, but eBay did the right thing and they got back into my account within, the whole situation after it was delivered. I mean, it may, it may have taken me like four or five days to have the whole thing done in the money, back into my account.
Now, what would I have done if this didn't work out in my favor? And eBay's like, I can't do anything with it. I would have gone after the freight company. The whole thing was the freight company had the item too long and I would have went after them and I would've got the money back from their insurance company, because it shouldn't have taken this long.
I honestly probably could go back after the freight company right now and try to get the shipping money back that I paid to ship it. But it's more logistics. It takes more time. And I think I won't do it. I'll just, I'm good. I got my money and I got everything set and done, but I probably could go after them because of them taking a month to deliver something that should have only taken like six or seven days.
So that was another option. Yeah. Don't just take that's the biggest thing is problem solving. Don't just take a no on one thing and be like, all right, I got screwed. I'm never selling on eBay again. Figure out the problem. Okay. If I can't get my money back from eBay, I did the right thing. I can sleep at night because I'm doing the right thing.
Let me see where I get my money back. I'm going to go fight that freight company or the shipping company UPS or FedEx. And don't give up if they say no. Don't give up, just keep going. Sometimes you have to work on this and a $700, that's a big paycheck. It's worth it working on it. Now if you're fighting over 50 bucks, sometimes it's better to walk away and keep your sanity.
But for the most part, if it's a, it's a higher dollar one, definitely. If there's a will, there's a way you should be able to work through the problem. You just have to problem-solve and another good point is maybe take somebody else's— Melissa and I bounce ideas off of each other. We have each other to do that.
Maybe you don't have somebody. Try to find somebody that you can bounce ideas off who might be another seller on eBay and talk to them and figure out what exactly is going. There's probably all kinds of forums and stuff online that you can join and get, get some more answers on the situation.
Melissa: That's what we have for our members group too.
They like to throw their if there's any question, then they throw it in there. Like if there's a refund request. But we also don't want to scare you too, because we've only had three refund requests this last past year. And two of them were in our favor. One of them is out still, it's not completed. It's not completed yet.
So it's from December.
Rob: The ones you have to be careful for is not as described. When somebody claims not as described, and we'll do another podcast on that. We can dig in deeper to that, but those are the hard ones. Those are the hard ones to win. And we did win one this year, not as described and we got it and got it in our favor.
Melissa: It was an $1,100.
Rob: $1,200 is what that one was. Yes, it was an escalator. So maybe we'll do another podcast talking about that, going through that situation, but we did win it and we got our money back on that. And so there, there, like I said, there's multiple ways to win these. And it might not be from eBay. It might be from the freight company or the shipping company.
But you just really have to work on some of these sometimes and problem solve what you can do to get that money back. If it ends up, you have to give a refund and you need to get the money back.
Melissa: So I think the biggest thing to recap is get eBay on the phone. Be polite when you're talking to the rep even if, because sometimes these situations are frustrating and you're flustered and you're frustrated and you, you might be, you know, come off a little bit upset because you are, you don't want, like, this is not a fun thing to do.
Yeah.
Rob: It is. And I've multiple times said, listen, I'm not trying to yell at you. You can tell people. I'm just very frustrated with this situation. And a lot of times, the reps will say, I totally understand. This might be coming out. I'll say this might be coming out bad. And I might be, I'm not trying, I'm not trying to get upset with you.
And if you tell them that the biggest thing you can really do is be polite. A lot of times, guys, these are not people who are sitting there and trying to screw us. That's not the case. They're just people doing their job. They're answering phones and trying to get the results.
Melissa: And they have to mediate for both sides. So they have to take both sides into account.
And for us selling on eBay, they've been doing it the longest. So they're actually not that bad at it. Like they're, they're pretty good at figuring out you know, who's telling the truth and whose side or whatever. But the biggest thing, like we said, be polite and then the confidence is a huge part. Like be confident in what you need to get done because that, and not be mean, like be polite, then be confident, and then you can get a little bit stern.
So, is stern the right word that I'm looking for?
It's not rude, but it's just like confidence, confidence.
Rob: Knowing the outcome of the situation that you want. And knowing that it's the right thing. When you're confident about that, it comes off. I even think about Stacy, just a real quick recap. Stacy tried multiple times.
I think she got on the phone with eBay 10 times. This is one of our students. She got on the phone 10 times with eBay to get a negative feedback removed. And she could not do it. She tried and she tried and she tried and I said, Stacy, let's jump on a three-way call. Let me get on with a representative.
And I had that negative feedback removed in five minutes, but it was the confidence that I had with the rep.
Melissa: Knowing that they could do it.
Rob: Exactly.
Melissa: And they would do it.
Rob: Exactly. That's one of those things that you really have to do with these reps. They have to understand that you do have the confidence and you know exactly what you're doing.
You're not asking them to do something wrong or something illegal or something that's not the right thing. You're trying to get them to do the right thing.
Melissa: And the negative feedback was undeserved. So that was exactly it wasn't something legit that happened.
Rob: But she talked to, how many representatives had told her no, we can't remove negative feedback.
We can't do that. No, we can't do that. And finally, she was exactly, she was okay with it. She's like, I'm just going to keep moving forward. I'm going to wait for this to drop off in a year and I'll be okay. And I was like, Stacy, let's jump on. I bet I can get this thing done. I'm not saying anything about me, but it is the confidence.
Melissa: It's more confidence because you've done it a lot of times.
Rob: Many, many times. I've had to talk to representatives and get things done. And when you have the competence to do that, I'm telling you it will go a million miles just having the confidence.
Melissa: So definitely look for an upcoming podcast on more refund requests for not as described, because we do want to dive into that and a couple other different things that we have that happen in this business.
You know, of course we do love this business, but it's not all butterflies and rainbows all this time. It's things that you got to work through, so we definitely want to help you get through those.
Rob: Absolutely. And I will add the one that we had is not as described that we won that case. Yeah, we got that one and we're in the middle of one right now that is not as described and that one, I had to accept the refund back.
And we'll find there's multiple different ways when that happens, not to lose your money as well. We'll do an, a whole other podcast onto that. And, you guys will be able to hear kind of the situations on those. But definitely remember almost every single transaction is going to be different. There's going to be different ways in different turns.
You can take. Exactly. If you're a problem solver, you can, you can definitely get what you need to.
Melissa: One other good thing to note is when you get that refund request or that case open, don't just jump in and respond immediately. So just take a minute. You have like three days, you have a little bit, you don't have to like just all of a sudden get flustered and respond.
So think about the situation and then maybe talk to somebody, talk to eBay too, before you respond back. So there's a lot of things you can do. You don't just need to jump into.
Rob: That was one thing that I used to do as well is when I got our, some type of request for return. I would get eBay on the phone before I even responded back just to ask them, hey what are my options here. And eBay could go back and look at all the messaging and see, you know, look at your description and your pictures and see what it is exactly what was going on. And they could tell you sometimes, oh, by the way, yeah, you don't have to take this refund. This guy altered the item and no, you do not have to take it back.
He specifically said he took something off the item. You're not responsible for that. So there's many, many different ways.
Melissa: You're jumping into another... too much stuff.
Back to this one. So, so we, we got it solved. We got our $615 back. And yeah, we'll dive into some more on the next one. So thanks guys.
Rob: You guys rock, have a great day.