PayPal won't let me refund!

[notcitrus]

Ok, this is academic as the parcel turned up at the last minute but:

Buyer paid by Paypal. Item doesn't arrive, so I agree full refund. I go to the payment and the 'Refund' button, enter the amount, and get an error message saying "You cannot make this payment at this time"

My Paypal balance might have been less than that, but I could still buy stuff as it just came off the linked credit card. So why couldn't I do a refund??

Because I think it has to come from your paypal baLANCE.

Yep, SBB is correct. You'll need to wait until you've sold some more stuff, or transfer some funds from your bank account (think this takes a few days).

Ah, I wondered if that was it. Would be nice if Paypal had said that... turns out that there's no bank account linked to the account and would take 5-7 days to add.

Was wondering how to explain the delay to a very patient buyer, but then his parcel arrived back to me and he's paid me to resend it. Let's home he gets it this time!

This happened to me last year and the buyer had to wait ages for their refund . I think it took about 10 working days to move money from my bank account to PP.

I'm a lot more cautious now and try to keep the money in PP until I've received positive feedback.

Glad your parcel turned up!!

You can only refund from avaialable funds.

Sometimes it lets you fund by bank funding but rarely.