How to Issue Partial Refund on Ebay 2026 Easily

Sign in and go to My eBay's Activity tab, the dashboard that also shows your offers, watchlist, and purchase history. Expand Selling in the left-hand menu.

Seller Hub covers the same ground with a different layout, but the classic My eBay menu works fine and is the more direct route on a personal account. If you land on a sign-in screen instead of the dashboard, your session has simply expired. Log back in and My eBay reopens where you left off.

With Selling expanded, the full list appears: Overview, Sell an item, Drafts, Scheduled, Active, Orders, Unsold, Payments, and Shipping labels. Click Orders, then search by buyer name or item title to find the transaction tied to the complaint. The refund tool is scoped to that one order, not a general account setting, so open the specific order before anything else.

Open the actions dropdown on that order and select Send refund. The item stays sold and the buyer keeps it; only the money moves, which is the point of this path over a full return.

If Send refund isn't in the list, the order already has an open cancellation, return, Money Back Guarantee case, item-not-received report, or an outside payment dispute against it. In that situation you respond inside that specific request instead. A buyer's return, for instance, has its own Offer a partial refund option under the return's details, and eBay caps that offer at one attempt per return.

eBay asks for a reason before it will process anything: item not as described, buyer changed their mind, and problem with the order cover most cases. Pick the one that actually matches, since it's what eBay refers back to if the buyer opens a dispute later.

Then enter the amount you agreed on rather than the full price. You can refund up to 100% of the transaction; a cracked case on an otherwise working phone might reasonably warrant 15 to 20% back, for example. Check the figure before you submit. eBay processes it immediately and there's no built-in way to pull an overpaid refund back.

Send a short message explaining what you refunded and why, right after you submit it. Buyers who hear from a seller directly are less likely to escalate to a formal case.

You'll get one email when the refund is initiated and a second once it completes, and the same order page shows its status. The money typically reaches the buyer's original payment method within a few business days. If a buyer says a week has passed with nothing to show, check which payment method is on file before assuming eBay lost it.