Echeque Refund/Cancellation

[Thomclan]

Hi,

I hope someone can help I sold a mobile phone on eBay and the buyer paid for it by "echeque".

I hadn't heard of this before as I'm only a wee private seller selling some stuff around my house. So I researched that this and I understand that this is due to insufficient funds in the PayPal account. It was due to clear today (5 days after purchase) however in the meantime the buyer has changed her mind, doesn't want the phone anymore and asked me to cancel the order.

I sent a friendly message back just asking why they had changed their mind, saying that’s a shame etc but I would cancel the order. Which I did. I then went into my PayPal account and clicked cancel on the pending echeque as I couldn’t refund. (I never actually got a reply from the buyer)

My main question of this post is: How long will it take for the buyer to have their funds back?
PayPal isn't giving me any information and eBay says "Please refund the buyer by 04 November 2016. We'll then ask the buyer to let us know when they receive the refund"

My concern is - communication with the buyer (who only has feedback of 14) has been rather sparse with one or two word responses and no actual sentences (or even an apology for wanting to cancel or a 'thank you' for actually cancelling it for them).
I'm worried that they will not tell eBay they have their money back and I will face action from eBay (or whatever the consequences would be)

Thanks for any help or advice.
H

[kernowlass]

@Thomclan

Firstly an echeque has nothing to do with insufficient funds. Normally when someone pays you > paypal CREDIT you the money and paypal wait for the funds to clear through from the buyers bank.

BUT they only do that if the buyer has a back up card linked to their paypal account as well to reduce risk to paypal, if they don't then the onus is on the buyer and seller to wait until the funds complete and the echeque clears.

I have received lots of echeques but only one ever failed.

Secondly if you have cancelled the echeque then it will show up on paypal and the buyer does not need to let ebay know its cancelled as it will show anyway. If you cancelled on ebay it would have been refunded if it had cleared, but as it had not cleared in ebays eyes he has not paid yet.

BUT the time it takes to go back to the buyers paypal account balance depends on when it ''clears'' through to his paypal account (as you cancelled it), so instead of clearing through to you it clears through to his paypal account balance. As it had nearly cleared through to you then it would not be long showing in his balance.