Ebay customer services requesting a out of ebay settlement??

[jimineycrick3t]

Hi..ok..please bear with me here it gets quite confusing TBH.

I sold an electrical item on ebay which I know was worked perfectly fine before shipping. A few days later I received a message from the buyer to tell me that a specific part of the item was faulty..which was fair enough although I am 100% certain all was working fine, I asked the buyer to return the item and I will issue a refund. Soon after this the buyer opened a dispute due to the item being faulty, no messages from the buyer about posting the item back or anything. Anyways after waiting the specified amount of time ebay closed the case in my favour so all sorted...so i thought!

This morning I have received an email from the customer services department at ebay which states that the buyer had contacted them and after receiving the faulty item from myself had sent it to be repaired and would like a part refund for the cost of the repair...which was not even the specific part which was mentioned in the first message to begin with . I did not follow the link in my email as I smelled a fish and instead logged onto my ebay account to see if the same message was there...which it was??!! It is asking me to contact the buyer via personal information which will be sent to me once I click on the link in the email (and my personal information will be sent to the buyer also) so it can be discussed/resolved outside of ebay.

Right now my patience are waring very thin so it would not be a good idea for me to ring ebay, therefore just wondering if anyone had any experience of this? Surely it is against ebay's policies to hand out members personal details, in fact I'm pretty sure they always encourage members to ALWAYS go through ebay.

Do you still have all the original correspondence? Id send this to eBay and tell them to shove it.

bizarre - I would go to live chat and also post about it on the community boards.

But personal details are given when you sell to someone.

okay.... basically, the buyer sending it for repair means they cannot reject it or return it or demand anything. They have accepted it in condition it was, so They don't have a valid claim, any more.

& Because they opened a case I think that you already have a defect you cannot be rid of unless Ebay CS find in your favour (they won't), so nothing more to be lost there. You have lost any reason to accommodate them.

I would confirm all that on Ebay discussion boards, else my gut feeling is to dig heels in, refuse any further compromise or communication, and point out that buyer has accepted it in the condition it is, so they can't claim SNAD etc by usual EBay rules. I will therefore be a little surprised if Ebay still tried to force you to refund (but then again, nothing Ebay CS does can surprise me any more).

actually, there is one reason to accommodate buyer, which is up to you if it matters: you could partial refund just to avoid visible negative feedback that puts off future buyers. A careful reply to their negative would be more than enough to make most prospective buyers shrug & ignore, though.

At this point the dispute is out of Ebay procedures (because of the buyer's own actions), that's why I think Ebay is encouraging you to take it all private. Ebay don't want an unhappy buyer, but sometimes they have to accommodate seller rights, too, so they can't really proceed (or so I think).