Can't Refund Buyer, says it Failed. Now what?

A buyer opened a case, I went straight to refund the buyer. I got a message
saying the Refund Failed and to go to paypal.

I checked in my paypal and that transaction has no option to "Issue a Refund" which
is normally there. It's gone.

I don't want to get a seller defect for not sending them a refund in 4 days. If the buyer
escalates it, ebay won't be able to refund them either right? There's an error, so I shouldn't
get a defect? Just want to make sure.


Also, maybe this buyer is a scammer. I think I remember in the past a similar situation and
nothing could be done about it.

What reason did they give to open a case?

Someone I know had something like this in 2016, buyer then contacted my friend and said instead to send payment via friends and family to a different Paypal address.

I advised my friend not to do that, because if they ( the buyer ) press the case they might get a refund to the PP they paid from, so in effect they get 2 refunds.

The reason was simply for not having received the item. I tried to refund them through ebay and it was failed. I tried to refund through paypal but there is no option to issue a refund. I'm wondering what would happen after 4 days if the buyer attempted to escalate the case to ebay? I don't think ebay would be able to refund the buyer too because they'd get an error message.

In any case, I was able to convince the buyer to close the case. I told them I would send another order out if they still wanted the item. He agreed and closed the case.

Call Peepal. The support will do the refund in your behalf. It's probably on of those random security measures that their system does.

Have seen this issue/similar issues with weird scenarios such as a buyer having paid for a purchase with part on one payment method and part on another. Would recommend calling PayPal and letting the buyer know about the issue in the meantime.

And importantly, take @MisterF's advice. Always refund transactions through the platform they were paid. Do not refund a PayPal transaction through a method besides PayPal or you are setting yourself up to get burned.