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I'm having trouble refunding certain buyer
 

There are more and more buyers around this time of year using gift cards for their purchases. Problem is, when one of the buyers want to return the item for a refund, I am unable to process this refund because the gift card they use does not accept funds back onto the card.

When this issue arises I have usually been reaching out to the buyer, explaining the situation, and sending money to their PayPal via "send money to friends and family" feature on PayPal using the email address I have on record with them. However, this has caused a lot of issues. Either they are not understanding why the gift card cannot accept funds, or they can't access the money sent to them, and the back and forth communication has become time consuming.

What I have been trying to do in this situation for buyers that have opened a return request case on ebay is simply clicking the "Ask ebay to step in" feature, explain to ebay that the refund is unable to process or go through, and then submit this to them. It seems to be working okay as ebay one way or another sends the buyer back their money within 24-48 hours, but now I am wondering if I am messing up my seller rating by doing this? Are these cases being counted against me?

How would you guys handle this situation?

Re: I'm having trouble refunding certain buyer
 

I'm fairly certain they do count against you, but why not check your dashboard to be sure? I've had the same thing happen to me twice now. For some reason it won't allow the refund to process when it's just a return request, but in both of my cases I was allowed to issue a refund once the buyer escalated the case.

Re: I'm having trouble refunding certain buyer
 

I checked and they seem to be counting against me so i guess i am going to stop doing it this way. Pretty ridiculous ebay / pp dont have an easier workaround to refund a buyer who uses a prepaid card!