u/Sodax3123

A buyer has requested a refund as 1/7 books has arrived damaged in transit.

I have photos and videos of each book being packaged and me placing them in the box, each secured with a lot of bubble wrap and packed well.

Not to speculate, but with the order I stacked the books in the box, it’s a strange one to be damaged out of the rest of them. It seems as the damages occurred upon unboxing with deliberate scratch marks but there’s no time to speculate.

This is the note with the buyer’s request.

“I realized looking at the books after unwrapping them, despite the seller having packed them quite well, that a volume has cuts on the cover”

What is the best way to proceed? Do I message them and offer a partial refund?

I am based in the UK and the buyer Italy.

Since this was through eBay international shipping, would I accept the return? But this would set me back as one if not all of my books could return damaged and I would be unable to resell the books at all.

I could also offer a partial refund. I read that since eBay handle the shipping after it reaches the hub, I am fully protected from issuing a refund.

Any advice would greatly be appreciated since I have 3 days to handle this before it gets sent to eBay.

Hey Taureans, I (F 24 now?!) have a love hate relationship with my birthday.

I always used to show up and show out for my friends and others when growing up because birthdays are genuinely important to me. Getting that midnight message in, buying or making sentimental gifts. But I noticed that when mine came around, the efforts were not reciprocated.

At first I thought, maybe they’re not birthday people and I shouldn’t push out my expectations, so I made it apparent that birthdays are important to me and I would appreciate that effort. The next year I was also met with disappointment. So as I do, I lowered my expectations and eventually started to dread my birthday and get slightly sad and not even want to celebrate it.

This year I wanted to change the narrative for myself. I can’t celebrate my day today or this weekend with friends as I have my dissertation due next week that I am still working on. But since last week I have been reaching out to current and former friends to invite them to a birthday picnic the week after and got a positive response and interest. I always preface the invite with, my birthday is on the 15th but (please come to my picnic in a week). I thought this would mean my birthday would be marked in some sort of calendar or reminder as this is what I would have done were the roles reversed.

I have received no messages from any of these people and now I am wondering if to go through with this picnic, it would just feel fake to me. All this to say, I need to now work on reducing the impact of people’s actions and take back my birthday for myself. Look at all I’ve written just because I didn’t get any unprompted birthday messages!

This is our season guys. I am going to have a lovely day and lovely dinner with my mum and dad (the only ones to message me :) ) then, if I post my birthday online later, look forward to the influx of belated birthday messages 🙌🤩🦄.