Accepted buyer offer at 1245pm today and got hit with a dispute at 9:03pm today
Hello everyone happy early 4th just looking for a bit of advise on how to proceed with this. Buyer sent an offer at 12:51 PST today, I accept at 12:52 PST and then am hit with a payment dispute as shown in the picture, for the reason of "not receiving the item yet". I dont mind to refund it and be done but I just don't want to leave myself open to negative feedback from an obvious lie and fake reason just to cancel. Any help from more experienced sellers on how to navigate foward would be greatly appreciated. Please see picture attarched.
P.S. I have not shipped the item yet.
Update: Thank you all for the awesome advice and guidance on how to handle this. Listening to you all and the majority of what I was reading, I accepted the dispute and gave the refund. I also blocked the buyer, taking screen shots of certain information including address, message history, offer history, and timelines to protect myself incase of bad feedback, and relisted the item. Ebay did close the dispute stating " The buyer's payment institution sided with you and there's nothing else you need to do". l will post a picture below. Thank you all again!
Additional Update: Just got off the phone with ebay 11:22PST 6/30. The sale was still showing up in my orders page with the red banner to "ship by this date" still. I called ebay because I didnt want this affecting my seller rating or anything else and was curious as to what happens with it. They advised me it wouldnt and if for some reason it did I can dispute any negative and have that taken off my account. Additionally they did state since the dispute has been completed, to use the relist option on the sold listing, relist the item, and the old sold listing will be removed from the orders page within 3 buisness days.
Hope this helps anyone else that comes across this issue!