eBay changed the rules around buyer cancellations in the UK to conform with the policy for US sellers. As of last week, sellers may no longer simply cancel an order if requested by a buyer and get full protection – they must make sure the buyer sends a cancellation request.
UK sellers should also be particularly mindful that eBay will automatically relist items in cases where sellers accept the buyer cancellation and issue a refund.
That was a sticking point for US sellers when eBay instituted the auto-relist of cancelled items policy last year, announced as part of the Spring Seller Update.
Read about the new UK policy on the eBay UK announcement board.
Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
Have any eBayUK sellers confirmed they no longer have the option to initiate a cancellation as buyer request?
“If a buyer asks you to cancel an order, they’ll need to send you a cancellation request.” That language has been in the US policy for a while now but it didn’t take away that option for US sellers. If I remember correctly, when asked for clarification in the US community, eBay employees confirmed that a request in a message counted as a “buyer request” in regard to this policy.
Maybe this is just another example of eBay botching a policy update with confusing/unclear language.