 how to avoid eBay's automatic return approvals policy in 2021. Recently, eBay started to automatically approve return requests made by the buyers, which means they're approving the return request, uploading a print label on your behalf, and they end up sending the product to your doorway because they're using your return address, which is not typically a good thing for us dropshippers, but do not worry because in this video I'm going to go over exactly what that means and what you need to implement in your store so that eBay will stop automatically approving the return requests. So just watch this quick intro and let's begin. Hello, everyone. My name is Liron from AutoDS. I'm the content producer. I've also been dropshipping for the last four years, and I highly encourage you to like this video because it really helps out our channel. Share this video so that your friends and family can also learn about the amazing world of dropshipping and subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you can always stay updated on all of the cool videos that we have going on around the world of dropshipping. So without further ado, let's begin and see exactly what eBay is doing with all of these automatic approvals and what we can do to avoid it. So to begin, let's talk about the free returns and paid returns and the differences between them. So in your business policies, you have your payment policies, your return policies, and your shipment policies. Now in the return policies, you can choose whether you want the return shipping to be paid by the seller by you or by the buyer. Now if you're going to choose seller, which means free returns for the buyer, if you are going to pay for the return label, eBay will give you a much higher visibility for your listing, which means you will rank higher and have more traffic and sales. So as long as your supplier can offer free return labels, use the seller pays for the return labels and allow the buyer to have free returns. If your supplier does not offer free returns and there's nothing that you can do about it, then just choose that buyer will pay for the return shipping, but really do this only if you have no choice. So that's a quick tip on free returns and paid returns. Now let's talk about the history of automatic returns. Now what happened was a few years ago in 2017, eBay started to automatically approve return requests and sellers, especially dropshippers had no idea why they're doing this. On one hand, eBay was automatically approving their return requests. Secondly, they were uploading a return label on your expense. And third, they would use your return address as the return address so the product would end up on your door on a return label, which you had to pay for. This doesn't make any sense. This does make sense for sellers who have only one return address. But for us dropshippers, this definitely isn't the case. So what happened here was many dropshippers had their hands on their heads, not knowing what to do now because all of their returns are showing up at their houses, they're paying for the return labels, they're refunding the buyers without getting any refund themselves from the suppliers. And at the end of the day, dropshippers found themselves losing a lot of money. But as you may well know, with every problem that arises in the world of dropshipping throughout the years, the dropshippers always find solutions and everything always ends up working out. So let's see exactly how this one worked out. So once again, it all began with this announcement that eBay made beginning of October 2017 return requests may be automatically accepted to make the return process easier for you and the buyers, which isn't the case for us dropshippers. So what did we do? The first thing that we did at AutoDS was we created a blog to help you find a solution, a quick solution to this problem. And this quick solution was to go inside your address settings on eBay and change the name to returns department, change the street address to do not ship to this address, wait for my message instead of whatever address you had, and then check and save that as your primary address. So now, instead of having your address as the return address, this time when a buyer opens a return request and eBay automatically approves it, the buyer will see do not ship to this address. So they won't ship to that address, they're going to wait for you to contact them, or they will contact you themselves and ask for a return label. So this was a good temporary fix. It helped fix about 90% of the orders, but buyers and sellers were still having a real hard time handling their return requests this way, because it was just a temporary solution, and it's still not 100%. And it's still a little bit confusing to some. So what happened was once again, to every problem that comes up in the dropshipping industry, we always find a solution. So there was a solution to go inside your eBay seller preferences, and check in the rma box at the bottom of the page. If you need the link to your return preferences page, just check out the links in the comments below this video. And in the full blog that's below this video, because there's much more information there than what I'm talking about in this video. So if you click on the seller return preferences, you'll be taken to the eBay return preferences page, which looks like this, all you have to do is scroll down all the way and click in that rma number box. Once you click in this checkbox, you'll see that it's on. Once it's on, you'll know for sure that eBay will stop automatically uploading return labels on your expense. If you're not sure if eBay is automatically accepting the return requests and uploading labels on your expense, one way to check it out is by seeing the emails that they're sending you on every return request. Because on each one, they have an explanation of exactly what they're doing there. Now, since I have a couple of eBay stores myself, I can show you live examples of the emails that I got on both scenarios. So on the first scenario, I would get an email, the buyer is returning this item, the buyer with his name is returning the product's name. This return has been automatically approved and we've asked the buyer to send the item back. That's fine. But the next sentence is what says it all after the buyer ships the item, we'll share the tracking information with you. eBay will tell me what the tracking number is, which means they are the ones who provided the return label here, which is not what we want. Now, once you activate that rma checkbox number that I showed you, the next time you'll have a return request, the email will look like this return approved, just like we saw with the product's name. The buyer with the buyer's name is returning the product's name. This return has been automatically approved and we've asked the buyer to send the item back. That's fine. But what's the next sentence? See the request details and be sure to provide a return label by October 1st 2020 or whatever day. This is how you know that eBay is giving you the option to provide a return label, which means you have an rma checkbox checked in and everything is fine. They will never upload print labels on your expense. And so this is how you know that they are not doing it automatically for you. So this was the unofficial solution to have eBay stop automatically provide return labels on your expense. But recently, eBay sent out a new wave of emails to all of their managed payment users on September 14, 2020, which was just about three weeks ago. So they sent out this how the returns works explanation all over again, with a few more twists and turns. So let's take a look at that because this is the most recent update for the returns. So the first thing they did was they gave you this chart saying, okay, this is how the return works now, guys. And really, it's a confusing chart. I don't think anybody or most people don't know how to read this chart. Okay, where do we start? What's going on here? The buyer requests a return, we can't go this way. So we have to automatically give a label, even though it shows up over here. Anyways, really confusing, can't really see what's going on and can't really understand what goes before what and what they're trying to tell us. So once again, eBay caused a whole new wave of confusion. Thousands of job shippers asking once again, what does this mail mean? What does this chart mean? What about the whole RMA trick that we learned in the last couple of years, which was working really well for our returns. Once again, guys, no reason to panic, everything is okay. Let's walk through it. So the first change that happened, besides having to understand this graph, don't worry about it. The first thing that happened is that eBay once again is auto accepting their returns. But the new twist here is they're also accepting an auto refund feature, which means once the product returns and eBay can see that with the tracking information, eBay will automatically refund the buyer within two days of the product return. You need to be responsible for offering the refund. Do not let eBay get to the point where they have to send the refund on your expense instead of you having to do it. Do it yourself. As soon as the product returns, even if it takes your supplier some time to credit you for the return, you should send the buyer a refund even before you get it from the supplier. Do not wait for eBay to do it for you. You want to take care of your seller account. Offer the refunds and then wait for the supplier to refund you. This is the better way to do it to maintain a healthy seller account status. So the first thing that eBay added now is the automatic refund that they will send after two days if you don't offer the refund yourself. Now there are three scenarios in which eBay will not automatically approve any return request, let alone upload any print label on your expense. The first scenario is a late return request. What this means is if your return policy states that the buyer has up to 30 days to return the item, but the buyer decided to open a return request after 35 or 40 or 50 days, anything more than the policy that you have set, eBay will still allow the buyer to make a return request, but they'll give you the seller the option if you want to accept it or if you want to decline it. So if you don't want to accept a late return request, you really don't have to just decline the return request and eBay will close it and that's that. The second scenario in which eBay will not automatically approve a return request is if the product is in damaged condition. When the buyer opens a return request, eBay asks what is the reason and what is the condition of the item. So if the item is broken, then eBay will ask you the seller if you still want to accept the return. If you do not wish to accept it, just click on decline and eBay will close that return case and you won't have to refund the buyer. The third scenario is if there are missing pieces. So just like if the item is broken, if let's say it was a bundle pack of five of whatever, like let's say five marbles, but the customer only has three marbles, two of them are lost, eBay will ask you if you want to accept this return request. You don't have to if you don't want to. Another feature that's added on to return requests is if you offer free returns, you also have the option to offer a partial refund for any reason. If the product returned in a damaged condition or if there were parts missing, but you still accepted the return request, you have the option to offer a partial refund for these reasons or any other reason that you see fit. Just do not exploit it too much. Be fair to your buyers because if you're doing anything that's unfair, they will complain to eBay and eBay will take a look at the case themselves and become the judge. So always be fair to your buyers and do the best that you can to offer the best customer service that you always can because this is the long-term survivability of your store. For those of you that do want to use eBay's automatic returns and the print labels that they issue, you should know that they work with USPS for those return labels. So if USPS is a good returning shipping carrier for you and you only have one location to send the items back to, this could be a good option for you. So what actually changed and what is new in this new returns policy that eBay sent a month ago? The truth is not too much. Besides the fact that they're going to send automatic refunds after a couple of days, which you should do and not wait for them to do it. Besides that, the RMA option that we talked about, it was unofficial throughout the last few years unless you were connected to drop shipping communities like ours, you wouldn't have known about this RMA option, but we always offer these solutions in our videos, which are very informational, which is another reason why you should always subscribe to our videos. So this time eBay simply made it official. They came out and said, let me just show you guys, here's eBay's official solution, we'll click on that. It's all on the blog below, like I mentioned earlier, how the returns work. So you have your frequently asked questions and the last question I have a return address that is different from the address from which the item was originally sent. How can I make sure that an item is sent back to the correct location? In cases where you want the buyer to send an item to a different location, different from the one that you sent it, you will have the flexibility to specify the location where you set the rules in your return preferences, which is what I showed you guys just a few minutes ago. So that's all there is really to it guys. Once you add that RMA checkbox option, which is now an official solution from eBay, which took them only three years to come up with the solution for us. Luckily there's drop shipping communities and valuable information going around. But until then, this was an unofficial solution. And now it's official. So that pretty much sums up everything that you need to know about return policies. I know that it was not a short video. This is a very sensitive subject and there's always a lot to learn. I encourage you to read the full blog below. And don't forget to like this video because it really helps out our channel. Share this video so that your friends and family can also learn about all the cool advantages of drop shipping and subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you can always stay updated on informational videos like this because I upload them a lot. Until next time guys, bye-bye.