eawakening
eawakening is a user that we frequently purchased SATA to IDE adapters from, which often had a small portion of the order being defective, but in the last order we made, it became particularly problematic to get the refund back, even through the offered refund was accepted the following day. The refund stalled from Sept. 26, 2016 (when the refund amount was accepted, 1Ē less than what it should have been) to Oct. 11, 2016, when it seems I wasn't going to get the money back from this seller & opened an eBay claim. What led up to this is detailed below:
The order was made on Aug. 29th, 2016.
The order was received roughly around the ETA given by eBay.
Hardware was tested, 2 out of 5 were determined to be defective.
A refund claim was opened on Sept. 25th, 2016.
The amount offered by seller was $4.67 for the defective items, 1Ē less than what it should have been, but close enough that we accepted it on Sept. 26, 2016.
The refund stalled with a notice from eBay stating that there was an error sending the refund & they were attempting to contact the seller to retry sending the refund again.
I started contacting the seller about the stalled refund directly over eBay's message system roughly a week before the claim was filed with eBay (around Oct. 6th, 2016).
The conversation went back & forth for a while, the seller stating that the refund had already been issued, other times stating that I still needed to accept the refund amount (which was inaccurate as it was accepted the day after the amount was offered). This conversation went as follows:
Myself:
The refund agreed upon seems to have failed, so I'm checking to see if this is an issue on your side or something else. The current status of the return can be found at [link no longer valid] (I'll be updating this screenshot as the status updates). eBay has stated they will step in after Nov. 8th if the refund still hasn't been issued. While we are waiting for the refund, I am going to let the customer know that we are going to have to purchase from another seller if he needs more (where he purchases these pretty often). Feedback still has not been left on this purchase & right now I don't think positive feedback is going to be possible with the extended time of error on the refund.
eawakening:
Sorry for the inconvenience.
We refund you the partial amount on the 2 return cases that you opened.
You need to find the resolution center and accept the refund, then the money would be in your paypal account.
Please kindly have a try, I hope you can received the money ASAP.
Please donīt be angry or leave any feedback before you email us, we hope to solve problem peacefully.
Your understanding would be highly appreciated.
Waiting for your early reply.
Myself:
The refund amount was accepted on September 26, on the same day that I got the "partial refund" offer (it is now October 6), which honestly was only a penny less than what it would have been for the 2 items (out of a lot of 5), so it was interesting that it was even considered a "partial" refund unless you're considering the full price of the purchase, however only the 2 defective items were in question.
The current statement from eBay (as you can see from the screenshot) is that there was an error sending it & they're attempting to contact you to try again. If you're saying that the money needs to be refunded through eBay claims, then we won't be purchasing from you again, as I will need to wait until November 8 to have them step in on it. Of course I would agree to having that amount credited towards a new purchase of the same items (I just don't know when the customer is going to need to purchase them again).
If I understand what my sister has said about eBay claims (who works in the Fraud department of eBay), enough claims filed against an account will have that account terminated (or at least selling rights revoked if against a seller). It's not the resolution I'm seeking, but I do intend on getting back the value of the defective items. If the refund has to be issued by eBay, then that's a claim regardless of intended consequence that will be documented on both of our accounts (there's already a number of return/refund requests on defective items documented on my account; so far I haven't had an issue with getting back refunds on defective purchases that I've had to go through eBay claims to get back that money, however I have on Amazon before & I think at least one had his selling rights revoked, one in particular after claiming Amazon tampered with his product).
I would much rather this be sorted between us rather than having to file a claim, but it sound like you're telling me that's the route I need to take...
eawakening:
You mean you need a full refund for your orders?
Myself:
No. A full refund for the two defective parts would have been $4.68; I'm not talking about a full refund for the entire order as 3 of them did work. That's why I found it odd you stated you couldn't give a full refund for the defective parts when what was offered was only one cent lower than what would have been full for the defective parts. I suppose it's accurate as being partial to the whole order, but I'm not asking a refund for the full order, only for the defective parts. In any case the amount offered on September 25th of $4.67 was accepted by the customer & myself on the 26th, but eBay is claiming there was a problem with sending the refund on your side.
I've spoken with the customer about this & he was going to purchase another 30 when he had the money, but I told him we'd have to purchase from another seller as we're still waiting for this refund to process. We discussed the possibility of dropping the refund if either the refund amount could be credited towards the new order or just have an extra 2 sent with the new order when it's shipped, but I told him I'd need to discuss that with you before I could proceed with any action on it. I'm not sure it's possible to drop the refund at this point as it's already been accepted through eBay's return system, it's just stalled for some reason & eBay is supposedly trying to contact you about it.
I fully understand how computer hardware can be DOA (Dead On Arrival) as I've had these problems myself with even big name distributors, so the fact that there appears to be one or two that are defective in a batch doesn't surprise me & is somewhat expected when buying a number of them at once.
eawakening:
Thanks for your understanding.
I will check the refund today and reply you soon.
Please wait patiently.
Myself: (3 days later)
Still no update on the refund... Have you attempted to contact eBay to see if maybe it's a glitch in their system? I can confirm that it has not been refunded to my bank nor PayPal yet...
eawakening:
Sorry for any inconvenience caused to you. Only one refund is successful, would you please accept the other partial refund, or close the return case? Then we will refund you directly on paypal.
1) Below is the refund information:
- Transaction ID: [censored]，
- Your Paypal Account: [censored]
2) Normally payment will come to your Paypal account within 3 working days.
3) If you still not receive, please contact us freely.
Best regards,
The seller is stating that the refund in the amount of $4.67 has been issued & I ve been discussing it with him privately over the eBay message system for around a week already. The transaction ID he has given me is [censored], however I don t know if this is for the refund or the actual purchase. Sounds like he s stating he may not have received the confirmation of agreeing to the refund amount on the 26th, as he keeps saying I need to accept it regardless of the fact it already was on that date. I m not sure if this is a bug in the system or he s just deciding not to refund it after already offering the amount.
eawakening:
"Dear friend
You know it is not easy to make money these days.
We write this letter just want to get your forgiveness, which will be more important to ask you give positive feedback for us.
I am a customer service delegate in this ebay account, tell the truth, every day have to face with the high pressure from our customers, who come from all over the world. sometimes, the item is defective due to the shipment sometimes, the item is late delivery unexpectedly. We just want to say we really did not mean to do so. The most happiness thing for us is to hear that our customer receive the item successfully and perfectly.
we do want to help to solve all your problem with heart.
Since we have refunded FULL, could you pls kindly help to change your feedback to positive.
if agree,can we send you a feedback reversion request ?
The feedback reversion request is really precious for a seller, hope you can kindly help us.
Best regards
"
Myself:
I'm not willing to give positive at this point, nor neutral, as I had to go through eBay claims to get the money back & the refund was issued directly from them as stated on the transaction to my PayPal account. At this point the only thing I might be willing to do is remove the feedback entirely without leaving a follow-up (if possible), as there is the possibility that the error may have been on eBay's side, however they never confirmed that when I filed the claim & simply sent the refund from their own company, taking it directly from your account to fund it (this was the agreed amount, 1 cent less than the actual amount for the defective items, so not entirely full, but close enough). The fact that the refund stalled as long as it did & I had to go through eBay claims to get the money back means you've lost a customer & will be going through another seller to get these adapters in the future.
UPDATE: eawakening contacted me again on the 13th, stating the following:
We contacted with paypal, and they replied us that "Buyer used voucher, can't do partial refund."
That is why we cannot refund you successfully.
I actually believe this, as he wouldn't have known there was a gift card used unless he did contact PayPal; it is odd however that the money used to go back to gift cards when refunds were issued before, however the possibility of why it failed may have been because it was a partial refund rather than the full price of the original purchase.
The refund at this point doesn't matter however, I still won't purchase from him anymore because of the deceiving nature of his response to the negative feedback & this seems to be a normal response to negative comments when the buyer hasn't specifically stated that they contacted him already. Plus I later found this page that would state other fraudulent activity, which I forwarded to my sister (who works in the Fraud department of eBay) when I was telling her that they should go over his account data & see if he should be able to continue selling on eBay at all.
12/10/2016 Update
It should be noticed that this individual has multiple eBay accounts. So far the following accounts have been confirmed to be owned by him from Paypal transaction information:
