Do I need to close a case before the vendor refunds?

[dmoshal]

Bought a 3D Printer from Creality3d.shop.
They promised 5-10 day delivery.
It's been 42 days now and they have not yet shipped it.
I opened a case, and got a response from them claiming they cannot refund until I first close the case, see below.
There appears to be no way to inform Paypal of this.
This is the response I got from the vendor:
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Hello,

This is Shirley from the customer service department.

Thanks for your email and sorry to hear that, we have helped you cancelled the order already, could you please help us close the dispute? As open a dispute in Paypal, the money will be frozen, we can not refund in our system, thank you.

Have a nice day!
Yours sincerely
Shirley <removed>
Customer Service Department

[kernowlass · Accepted solution]

@dmoshal

NEVER close a dispute until you have a cleared refund.

If you do then the seller can ignore you and you won't be able to open another dispute for the same transaction.

They are perfectly able to refund you DURING a dispute and when they do so that automatically closes it anyway.

If they don't have cleared funds then that is their problem, if you haven't escalated to a claim then do so and then if the seller doesn't refund paypal will do so under their buyer protection policy BUT if you close it then they won't do that.