eBay is giving shoppers more flexibility to cancel their purchases. From now on, they can cancel an order as long as the seller has not marked it as shipped. The company describes this as a simplification that should benefit both shoppers and sellers.
The new policy will take effect on August 28. eBay has informed its sales partners in countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. With a press of the ‘Cancel order’ button, shoppers can retract their purchase, and the seller will be notified. The seller then has three days to accept or decline the request. “On paid orders, eBay will automatically decline the request after three days, but we encourage sellers to respond quickly”, the company writes.
Customer loyalty
eBay also encourages sellers to be accommodating towards cancellation requests and provides several reasons for this: “When feasible, it’s recommended to accept the request, especially if it is sent within minutes or a few hours of when an order is placed. Doing so has shown to discourage return requests or ‘item not received’ cases and encourages the buyer to return to eBay for their next purchase.”
‘When feasible, it’s recommended to accept the request.’
After acceptance, eBay promises to automatically issue a full refund to the buyer and fee credits to sellers as per their fee credits policy.
Test results
Previously, eBay buyers only had one hour to cancel an order after placing it. The company, which keeps introducing enhancements for commercial sellers as well as private sellers, justifies the policy change with results from conducted tests. These tests indicate that the number of cancellation requests only minimally increases with the new policy, from 0.9 to 1.1 requests per 100 transactions. According to eBay, this is offset by a 25 percent increase in customer satisfaction.
The number of cancellation requests would hardly increase.
eBay, one of the largest online marketplaces in Europe, promises protection to sellers who decline a cancellation request: “eBay will protect you by removing negative or neutral feedback on these orders.”
