Annoying Ebay buyer and posting to Italy

[Annoyance]

Sold a dress for £15 on a BIN listing, not auction. An hour later, the buyer sends me a message saying "Can I cancel the order?" (In Italian. I'm using Google Translate). I reply with one word: "Why?" She replies with "No matter canceling I want it! I thought about it again when it arrives?"

Shall I heed the red flags and just refund her? I've googled some stuff and found several messageboards complaining about the Italian postal service but even without that, I'm not feeling too confident about this buyer. I don't want to post the parcel and then suddenly have her change her mind again.

You can cancel it can't you? What did you put in your posting terms about abroad? I'll

I assume any Ebay sale can be cancelled by mutual agreement, although I've never done it. I don't have any particular posting terms, just that I post to the UK and EU and people in Europe pay a couple of quid extra postage.

Just cancel it, easy enough to do
A bit annoying but such is life

I have cancelled and refunded the buyer as I don't trust her. There were 4 people watching the item as well so now I've lost them, and it also looks like I've lost 20p during the PayPal refund. Better than losing the whole amount. I'm taking the MN advice and trusting my gut instinct.

We sell books, CDs and DVDs - true, it's mainly on Amazon - but our policy is not to accept orders from Italy or Spain because there are so many scammers it's just not worth the hassle. "Didn't arrive" and when the item is only £10 or so, it costs more in time than it does in cash to challenge them.
We also take a photo of the item in its packaging, just before sealing it up and then email this photo to the customer, purely to preempt any claims that the item is 'not as described' or 'damaged' - we've been burnt that way too. Funnily enough, we've had quite a few orders cancelled at that point.

What is it about Italy and Spain in particular?

I've never had any problems posting to Italy and Spain and I post there regularly, I always used tracked and signed though, even for low value items.

We had a spate of sales in these 2 countries where we ended up losing the item we had shipped, the extra cost of shipping and the money we were forced to 'refund' them because they claimed non-delivery. Mostly smallish amounts each time - £20 - £50, but sometimes a lot more and it all mounts up. We tried asking for extra to cover the costs of sending tracked and signed, but the buyers wouldn't pay and it just wasn't worth it for the lower value items. Then I read about other sellers experiences (on the sellers forum on Abe Books website) and thought "that sounds familiar". So we stopped selling to these countries. We've sold in lots of other countries, including France, Germany, America, Australia, Romania - no problems with any of these places. Also, we always email a photo first - through the websites system, so there's a trail of evidence - and I am sure the cancelled orders are when scammers have realised this means they won't get away with it.

I’ve heard the postal service is pretty unreliable in Spain Annoyance. No-one really trusts it which is why online shopping hasn’t grown as quickly there. So there is probably more scope for getting away with claiming it didn’t arrive.

Now that I've cancelled the order, she can't leave me feedback can she?

If it helps at all OP, I recently watched a BIN item and when it didn't sell and was relisted, eBay automatically emailed me to let me know it was back for sale. I don't know if it will work the same when you cancel a sale, but it might, your other watchers might be informed.

Though I have to say, if it was on BIN and they hadn't bought it, what makes you think they will now?