Caitlin A.

I have spent over 60 hours on this case and it's a lengthy explanation, but incredibly revealing for both eBay and PayPal:
A buyer requested to return a coat for the reason of "nothing wrong, just didn't like it." It was stated in my listing that I don't do returns, so I denied the request for the reason of buyer's remorse. They proceeded to ship the item back to me outside of eBay anyways. I called eBay multiple times and was assured that since the error was the buyer's and the return case was closed that there was nothing they could do to possibly pull the funds from my account. I didn't need to return the coat to them, but I still got in touch with them to try. The buyer then sent me money out of the blue to overnight the coat to the other side of the country, but I refunded that money since I wasn't able to change the shipping address on PayPal. They then re-sent the money demanding that I ship to Canada and didn't understand why it couldn't be done through ebay's international shipping program. It was an e-check that would take a week to clear, so I told them that I'd have to wait for that. They were incredibly uncooperative and when I finally said I would ship, they went and filed a claim on PayPal that the coat was "significantly not as described" (which was a lie, as documented by their messages on eBay) and forced a full refund in their favor. The claim was closed within 24 hours. I spent the next 3 days on hold with eBay explaining the situation and was told that there was no way that the return should have happened because it was a case of buyer's remorse, but that eBay had no power and the refund was done by PayPal. I finally got through to PayPal and was told that this decision was absolutely final and in the buyer's favor because the item had been returned and in my possession, so it's automatically a refund for the buyer. They not only got a full refund, but also the original $15 I paid to ship AND the seller fees I had to pay eBay, since the return wasn't documented on eBay. I lost $40 in this situation and feel like nobody at eBay had any power to do anything and I just got lost in a mess of transfers. I would be on hold for a few hours and then finally get through to someone, explain my story all over again, and then get transferred to someone who had no idea what was happening but who couldn't transfer me back the other way, so I'd have to hang up and wait on hold again for a few hours to try again. I had spent a so much of my time being assured by eBay that I did nothing wrong and the buyer was messing up right and left, but then being told by PayPal that eBay has no power and was just "giving me false hope."

So basically if a seller denies a return on eBay, just ship it back to them anyways and then file a case with PayPal (even if it's a complete lie) because eBay has no power to protect sellers and you will get a full refund + return shipping.

I did my own listings with Threadflip for several months and am horrified at how this is actually legal -- I wanted to do a return for a buyer, so their official customer service account had me send the funds plus shipping via paypal to threadflip's email with a note of the order number and told me I'd get the funds for that transaction after the successful return. THEY THEN KEPT THE ORIGINAL FUNDS "since the item was returned." I have no idea how that makes sense -- the buyer got their money back, but now I'm out $65 and am back where I started with an item to sell. Definitely won't be using Threadflip, though.