Keep Your Cool

You just have to love it when you’re cruising along, making sales, listing and shipping, when all of a sudden, you check your inbox to find an IRATE customer.

I had a whopper of an irate customer last week.

Whew…….this customer was a handful and a half!

The item she received wasn’t what she was expecting, and even though my listings state “No Returns”  I gladly accept returns if a customer isn’t happy. So I emailed her and let her know that if she wasn’t happy with the item, she could return it.

She emails back and says that she’ll return it, but I will have to reimburse her for the postage to return it.

Even though I kept my cool and maintained professionalism with her in my responses, she quickly became IRATE.  I mean sending me multiple emails before I could respond to her, emailing me in ALL CAPS accusing me of being a dishonest seller, ect.

At that point, I did respond to her and ask her to calm down and told her that sending emails in ALL CAPS and making accusatory statements in her emails to me is considered rude.

I reiterated that she could return the item if she wanted to, and I would fully refund her purchase and shipping, but that as the buyer she is responsible to pay for the return shipping.

When I got done emailing her, I got on the phone with eBay and and the representative read over our emails back and forth and told me that yes, what I had told her was correct and he noted my account about the phone call and what my resolution plan for the customer was.

After my call to eBay, I was headed home.  In the 15 minutes it took me to get home, I received two emails from the buyer, and a case was already opened.

The comments the buyer left in the case were: The seller totally flipped out on me and became hostile in her emails to me.  I think she has a history of this and has a history of negative feedback.

Wow……if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black……….

I responded saying that I had told the buyer to return the item and they became hostile with me.

Of course she had to respond back saying that I most certainly did flip out on her and that she had the emails to prove it. (at this point, I couldn’t help but laugh.)

She escalated the case to eBay,and eBay decided the case in her favor stating that she could return them as long as she pays for return shipping (duh, they decided in her favor, that’s exactly the answer I gave her too!)

Immediately, this buyer left negative feedback for me. (Which I knew was going to happen anyway)

A week later, she emails me and says that she just wants to let me know that she’s decided to keep the item.

WHAT?!?!?!  So you’re telling me you put me through an entire circus just to let me know that you’re keeping the item you bought?  WHEW……..you just can’t make everyone happy.

At some point, every one of us will deal with customers like this one.  Don’t let them rattle you……..take a deep breath and maintain your professionalism.

Keep in mind that eBay can and will review the emails sent back and forth between you and your buyer, so don’t do anything to shoot yourself in the foot.  Let them make a fool of themselves, you don’t have to play into their hand.

eBay Item Not Received….

I got an email last week from eBay. I knew it was from eBay. The email itself was legit.

The problem?

Well, I had already received positive feedback for this item in 2010!

It said, “eBay Buyer Protection please contact your buyer.”

It listed a book that I did indeed sell last spring. The attempt to file a dispute was dated June 2010!

GOOD GRIEF!

I forwarded the email to spoof@ebay.com just in case. I did not contact the buyer.

A few days later, I got an email saying that eBay sent out these old emails by mistake and to ignore them.

Moral of the story is–don’t freak out if you get strange emails. Don’t  send emails to your buyer or worry about your eBay account until you get information confirmed by eBay.

Rachel’s Thank You Note~Post From The Past

When it’s time to ship items, I always reinspect them to make sure I haven’t missed a spot on an item and I include this thank you note to buyers.

I print it on a half sheet of paper and I hand write “Thanks!” across the bottom right corner. It’s encouraged buyers to leave feedback, contact us if they’re unhappy before leaving feedback and increased our DSR’s.

From the desk of ….

Mortenview

Item: ________________________________________________

Thank you for your purchase, I appreciate your business. If you are happy with your purchase, I encourage you to leave positive feedback on eBay. In order to do this, please visit the “My eBay” section on eBay.com. Go to the “Items won” section. There, you can find this transaction and leave the appropriate feedback. If you are not satisfied with your item, please use the eBay message system to contact us with your concern before leaving feedback.

If you haven’t done so already, please check out our EBAY STORE.*Mortenview’s Gifts and Treasures* We list new items in the store several times a week, so you may want to save it to your favorites list, and check back often to see the new listings, or sign up for our store newsletter.

We also love to combine shipping on multiple purchases made at the same time to save you money.

Thanks for being a 5-Star Buyer!

**Feel free to copy and paste this into your own document for your store.**

What Goes Around…..

…….comes around.

You’ve heard that, right?

One of the questions I get asked quite a bit is something along these lines:

“I have a buyer who bought these jeans (or whatever the item was) and they don’t fit them right.  They want to return them, but I don’t accept returns, and I put all the measurements in the listing.  How would you handle this?”

Here’s another one:

“I received an email from a buyer the other day that read ‘My teenage son purchased this item without my permission, please cancel this transaction.’  Should I cancel it, or turn it into an unpaid item?”

Let me just say that the great thing about owning your own business is that no one tells you how to run your business, but I’ll tell you what I would do.

I would accept the return anyway, giving them a full refund, and yes, I would go ahead and just cancel the transaction of the buyer who’s son purchased the item in error.

In both cases, it’s really not a big deal, I can just click on the item and relist it in my store.  I know that eBay has rules and some sellers really like to make buyers follow them, but really……is it that big of a deal?  Is it worth risking negative feedback and having your DSR ratings marked down?

If I was the buyer, I would want someone to be flexible with me.  I mean, we’re all only human, right?  Mistakes happen.  Remember hearing the “Golden Rule” when you were growing up? 

Well, it still applies.

I had a buyer email me about returning an item last week, and she mentioned in her email to me that she wanted to contact me about her item rather than leave negative feedback (the item wasn’t what she was expecting…..anyway, back to my story) She stated that she never leaves negative feedback for a seller because she wouldn’t want someone to leave negative feedback for her.

As a seller, I really appreciated hearing that from a buyer!  So many times, it seems like buyers get demanding and hold that negative feedback over our heads.  What a great buyer to work with.

So, however you choose to handle customer service is up to you, but I would really like to encourage you to treat your customers the way that you want to be treated.  It’ll make eBay, and our world a better place.

This post sponsored by Hechoamano3 Knit pima and alpaca high end clothes for baby & child

To sponsor a post on The Selling Sisters see here

eBay Feedback: Is it Important?

Here’s the age old dilemma……..”I sold 100 items this month, and only 68 of them left feedback for me.  What can I do to increase the amount of feedback my customer’s leave?”

First of all, if this is something you can relate to, don’t feel like you’re the only one.

I can’t think of  ONE eBay seller who gets 100% of their customers to leave feedback for them.

I really feel that feedback is much more important in the sellers eyes than it is in the buyers.

On the selling end, feedback helps us get more sales.  It shows customers how trusted we are as a seller.  It shows them how established we are on eBay.

Sometimes, it helps them decide which seller to purchase from when they’re considering identical items from multiple sellers.

Detailed seller ratings that are left when feedback is left can either hurt or help your chances of being a Top Rated Seller.

On the buying end, buyers can’t receive anything other than positive feedback from sellers anymore, so other than avoiding unpaid item strikes, feedback isn’t as imperative to a buyer.

HOW important is feedback, or how important should it be to you?

Don’t get me wrong, I think that receiving feedback from customers is important to me as a seller, but I’m also not going to hound my buyers to leave it for me.

I really just let the chips fall where they may.  I include a “Thank You” note with the item that encourages them to leave feedback, but other than that, I don’t press the issue.  I figure that if they do, they do, if they don’t, they don’t and I just deal with it as it comes.

I know of some sellers who email buyers and ask them to leave feedback for the transaction, but I feel like that may potentially open a can of worms with customers being annoyed about it and marking down your DSR’s.  I’d just rather not go there.

What are your thoughts?

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