How to I return a refund.

[ice_9]

I recently purchase an eBay item which was delayed in shipping by COVID-19.  The seller issued a refund, after which the item was received.  I have contacted the seller to deterimine how I could return the refund, but so far, all attempts have failed.  The first thing I tried to do was "send money" back to the seller for the total amount.  However, PayPal does not recognize the seller name listed in my statement. After messaging with the seller, he suggested that I re-purchase the item and then notify him that it was for refund so that he would not have to ship the item again.  Unfortunately, his qty in stock is now zero, so eBay will not allow me to "purchase" the item again.  My question is this:  Is there another way to return a refund directly to a seller listed in the PayPal statement, without using "send money"?

[sharpiemarker]

@ice_9 

So in the PayPal transaction details for the eBay purchase in your PayPal account activity, do you find the seller's PayPal email address?

Don't use name to send money. Use the email address your payment was sent to originally, to send the money.

[ice_9]

I looked both in the refund and original purchase transaction.  It provides "seller information" "purchase details" and "transaction #".  None of these provide the seller's email address or phone number (personal identifiers - PID) that I could see - unless I have to drill down for it and missed it (I will keep looking).  eBay help desk indicated that this was not unusual.  Many seller, and buyer are reluctant to provide PID.

I did not see anything labeled "transaction details".

For what it's worth, I guess I should point out that the purchase was quasi-international (the seller is overseas but maintains domestic stock CONUS). In this case, there was no domestic stock on hand so he had to utilize international shipping.  That's what caused the delay in shipping and the current debacle.  However, with COVID-19 affecting international shipping, I am sure that this problem is occurring with other buyers and sellers as well.  I was hoping that someone here may have already had a similar experience and found a solution.

[sharpiemarker]

@ice_9 

So you went into your PayPal Activity page, look up the transaction(s) and clicked on it, and there was no seller email address where payment was sent to. If not, then that is very odd. Maybe its how eBay has PayPal integrated and want to avoid people paying independently from eBay or for safety precautions. Ask seller for an email address to send money to if they want to get paid. It can be any email address, they can register the email address to claim the funds.

<sigh> This shouldn't be like pulling teeth.

[ice_9]

"This should be like pulling teeth"

I agree.

I asked the seller for alternative means of returning the refund on two occasions - including providing an email or phone number to "send money". In both instances he replied by providing a link to his eBay store for a different item, to make purchase and to send a message to notify that the purchase was for the return of refund only (so they wouldn't ship the item).  Originally I thought he was merely providing the link to return the refund by repurchasing the original item (as stated in my thread-starter). Now I am not so sure.  In any case, in both instances the seller ignored the my suggestion to provide either a phone number or email to "send money".

The other possibility is that, by providing the links, the seller (without being explicit) wants me to send money back by purchasing one of the items provided in the link, both of which have a cost slightly less than the original purchase.   If so, then he doesn't realize that there are obvious problems with this, as there is no formal link to the original purchase or item to document the return refund transaction.

His last response (providing the second link to his eBay store) was yesterday.  I still haven't responded to this, hoping you folks or the eBay help desk might have a solution to this problem.