Did You Know Ebay Allows Return / Restocking Fees? Take Advantage To Deter Refunds

On storage auction message boards I often hear storage auction buyers complaining about how they often get refunds which winds up being a hassle and costing them money in shipping fees as well as eBay fees.

One eBay feature not many people seem to know about is that you can offer a return fee or re-stocking fee as high as 20%. Same way some stores charge you 20% re-stocking fee for returning an item eBay allows you to do this as a seller as well.

Now I have two eBay accounts, one more established than the other. Both are linked up to eBay stores. I'm not sure exactly what's required to use the restocking fee feature, but one of my accounts has it while the other doesn't. It may be required you be either a Top Rated Seller or Power Seller. I've yet to figure out exactly what qualifications are required to offer this but next time you are listing check to see if you have the option to offer a restocking fee.

One common complaint of eBay sellers is they oftentimes when selling tools or other things people need for one time use is that people will buy it and return it after using it. This is often the case with tools, Halloween costumes, think about anything that someone typically gets one use out of and then doesn't need. SOme unethical eBay buyers will buy something and return it essentially using the eBay seller as a free rental of that item. It winds up costing the seller both eBay fees as well as shipping fees since the item in the end isn't sold and typically shipping is refunded along with product price.

By using the re-stocking fee you are both deterring people from refunding because they know it will cost them 20% so unless there's a big problem they may as well keep the item. In addition to detering returns even if someone does return an item, as long as it's not an extremely heavy item to ship it actually sometimes works out to be profitable for the seller taking a return. Seller sells the item, it gets returned, they keep 20% which often outweighs eBay fees and shipping fees so maybe they wind up making 7%-10% of the item cost plus you get the item back to sell to the next eBayer.

If you find yourself taking back an excessive amount of returns and would like to deter returns as well as protect yourself against losses look into eBays restocking or return fees.