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Just as my one negative feedback from last year was approaching the 12 month cutoff I got a rash of 2 new ones this week. Same as the one from last year, no communication from the buyer about being unhappy with their purchase or wanting a refund just a negative feedback and a neutral one. In the past I would go out of my way to contact these folks and try to “make things right” but I guess I’m becoming more apathetic about these things lately. My thought process is that one or two negative feedbacks don’t seem to affect my sales at all and these people are often near impossible to please. I still offer refunds and do the customer service thing when people contact me with issues but as a busy father with a full time job plus an ebay business I just don’t see the point in investing my time/effort to respond to these folks. My thought process is I still have their money, eBay is not the type of business where you see many returns from trying to build customer loyalty and even if I reach out and give them their money back there is no guarantee they will change the feedback.
How do other folks on here feel about this? I’m definitely not “bitter” about these types of situations but the effort vs potential reward calculation just does not seem to justify any action on my part.
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I feel the same way about negatives and defects. However, I fight each one tooth and nail. I only get one or two a year. You said you recieved two in a week. No big deal like you said, but what if you get two more weeks like that? 6 negatives might effect sales. Then it may be too late to fight them.
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I just got a negative on Etsy from a lunatic, he left a frankly unhinged comment, but Etsy does nothing, I refunded, made a rational reply and have moved on. There honestly should be some standard for negative comments, maybe giving the buyer a set letter count so they can’t rage on and on? or how about a “you deserve it” negative I got from some asshole who found a thrift store receipt in the toe of his $29.99 shoes? this goes beyond leaving factual comment about the product received into a personal attack.
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We don’t engage the buyer since an unreasonable feedback is probably rom an unreasonable person. But we will take it up with eBay till we find that there’s no way to change it. I bet we can get eBay to remove 80% of neutral and negative feedbacks we get.
On the other hand, Dan from NY (who sometimes posts here) says he’ll call the buyer directly and try to work it out. He gives partial refunds and seems to have success having the buyer change feedback.
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I will respond to the feedback, so potential buyers see I respond to customer complaints. I will also reach to the buyer, apologize to them for their unhappiness, and let them know I take returns. I don’t try to convince or cajole them, just “If you would like, I am happy to take the item back as a return”. So far, no one has taken me up on it. The last one angrily replied “It’s not worth my time!”. But it is worth your time to yell and be nasty. Alrighty, then.
I don’t refund a dime in those cases, and I don’t feel bad about it, either. If I don’t like the shoes I buy from Macy’s, the clerk isn’t going to give me my money back unless I bring back the shoes.
So, I say, reach out to the buyer, offer to accept a return, and if they refuse, don’t worry yourself about partial or full refunds.
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I’ve had neutral feedback a long time ago from a customer who ordered something and it did not fit and waited a long time (like 3 months) to leave feedback, to that I just replied to the feedback that we offer returns on all items and would love to work this out, never heard back from that one but I also never tried to fight it.
With negative feedback I have been lucky so far, on another account I had a problem with the products I was selling not being up to par and got two negative and a neutral feedback, got the negatives changed once I was able to refund the buyer but the neutral stayed.
On my main account I just had one removed from a new eBayer who though he reached out to me but didn’t and had a broken item, I called eBay and they just asked me to work it out with the buyer, it took a few days but I got it revised. It is funny when you have hundreds of positive feedback about how fast something shipped or how I communicated great and then have one that says the opposite. I think people look at that and think “well that’s out of character for him”.
There is a seller on eBay I follow who has 6-10 negative feedback and they are all the same “item smells like smoke” and he always replies in the most harsh way possible about how items are from thrift and estates and his “disclaimer” at the bottom says this. This guy I would not buy from because I can see he does not care about the items he is selling.
I think your best bet is to try and contact the buyer, if they won’t get back with you then I’d reply to the negative and let future customers know your policy and if you have time call eBay after you waited a week and see what they will do. I think as long as you do the right stuff on your end you can get it removed.
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Wow over a week and I just got back to this thread, sorry about that. I appreciate everybody’s comments. I think the main point I was trying to make is the effort vs reward on those types of feedbacks. In one case the buyer said the item didn’t work and in the other case the buyer questioned the “like new” eBay condition rating on an item (I hate that eBay makes you pick from a drop down list of condition ratings on video games). In both of those cases I know the typical drill. I call eBay, eBay rep instructs me to reach out to the buyer, I contact the buyer and either get no response or, rarely, they reply and agree to a refund. In both scenarios, refund or none, the buyer never responds to my pleas for a feedback revision. I call eBay and eBay says they can’t change the feedback because it’s the buyers “opinion” on their overall experience. So..that being my general experience with how things go I started saying, why bother? 99% of people are happy or willing to work with me when there is a problem and the 1% that aren’t are just a waste of time and money to try to make happy.
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