« “Dear friend, Sorry,there seems something wrong with the case,we cannot refund you directly in the eBay resolution center. Could you pls kindly close the case firstly,then we refund you immediately via our Paypal ? ’Cause the case open, the ebay system don’t support to refund. The only way we can refund during case open is here. And, once we refund you here, the case will close automatically. Please close CASE firstly, we promise to refund you within 2 workdays. Waiting for your soon reply. Best regards, From Li Chenyi” »
Unless the rules have changed in the last few months, the seller can issue a refund while a dispute is in place. To me it sounds more like a ploy to buy the seller some time. Keep in mind that once a dispute is closed, it cannot be opened again.
If they don’t refund you, contact ebay, give ebay the exact response from the seller that’s above in the OP.
If you close it now there is no chance of ebay doing a thing if the seller doesn’t refund you.
Haha. Thanks guys. Its not about the money actually. Its so cheap I’m ashamed of saying the amount. But I just wanted to highlight how some sellers might be dishonest following paypal thread by tsetse.
Since the amount was so trivial, I actually thought it might be true. Imagine the seller doing the same trick for 100’s of items. Baiting and tricking users with cheap items. A pretty hefty buck to be gained.
Ive received this tactic several times from Chinese ebay resellers. Its often their common scam tactic to deprive you of a refund. I would contact ebay immediately and alert them of the sellers tactics in attempting to defraud you.
This is common amongst all sellers that take payments via Paypal, including Fasttech. I suspect it has something to do with the Paypal fees, in that if the seller simply cancels the transaction and refunds the money he does not have to pay the Paypal fees (as the transaction never happened as it were), but if Paypal ends up paying the buyer back, the seller does not get the fees that Paypal deducted from the original transaction back. For example, let’s say you bought a $100.00 item. The seller would collect roughly $96.75 after Paypal takes their cut. If Paypal refunds the buyer $100.00, they deduct that $100.00 from the seller’s account. But as he was only credited $96.75 in the first place, he now loses $3.25. However if the transaction is simply cancelled, he also gets the fees back that Paypal originally took on that transaction, so it is better for a seller to refund before a dispute is launched. That is probably why it is best when seeking a refund to tell the seller that you will give them 48 hours to issue a refund, or you will launch a dispute.
Normally, most of the sellers that ask you to cancel the dispute will be so gratefull they will refund you, but as there is no guarantee, you are taking a chance. Over the years I did cancel about 4 or 5 disputes and so far all of them did make a full refund after the fact.
Thats an interesting thought. I may give that a try next time if I can remember. The only flaw in your logic is that only Chinese resellers have pulled that stunt with me, even though they collectively account for less than 5% of all my pp transactions.
I can recall a Taiwan seller of an SD card that swapped brands on me without asking did it. I think the way that one went was they were going to give me a partial refund after I dropped it, so I did. They gave me the refund, and then I left feedback. I think it was pretty much the same story with a Chinese seller I bought a Sine Wave Inverter from. It only could sustain 900 of the claimed 1500 watts, so I asked for a pro rated refund. Again they gave it after I closed the dispute, but I told them I would not change my feedback until I had the refund. It seems like the feedback is the important tool to keep in your back pocket until you have your refund.
As TSellers said, Fasttech does it too. I allowed it with Fasttech, but only because their reputation could be damaged if they ripped me off thanks to forums like this where customers can share our good and bad experiences with their customer base.