Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Time to follow up:
Most of the packages were knocked loose and ended up finally leaving Indiana. Roughly 75% of those ended up getting delivered between my first post and now. My theory is that there was a delay in syncing the tracking in addition to a delay in shipping. No proof, just a guess.
The last big issue I’m dealing with now are the truly “lost” packages. USPS opened and closed a service request of one package without notifying me of the closure. I’m unsure if that means it was located, I need to open a missing mail request, or what. I’ll be exploring options tomorrow. With orders that had free shipping, I’ve encouraged buyers to claim their voucher ($5 or so?) for their next eBay order. I ship all First Class items with free shipping, so everyone who missed the expected delivery date should qualify.
So far there’s only been one upset buyer. They’d been pretty aggressive about getting the item and I believe had a case opened to locate it. I was prompt in getting back to them on the search, asked them to wait, etc, etc, but when the item arrived it was damaged/”non-working”, and they left feedback accordingly. With how badly they wanted it I’m sure the wait just made it worse. I offered a return but they’re already AWOL. Not a long-term eBay user either, so just someone passing through that decided to leave a mark on their way out.
eBay has been closing INR cases as the items have arrived, so good on them.
It’s funny – after this incident I’m now checking every package that goes out to make sure it’s not just sitting at the PO doing nothing.
The procrastinator in me wants to give it an additional day since the first instance of a lost package eventually broke loose and started moving, but if more buyers start noticing I’ll probably have to. Unfortunately they’re pretty carefree around here about tracking issues and just refer to the tracking history on usps.com, or tell you to fill out a form. Won’t stop me from trying, though.
It’s 10:00 PST and eBay has yet to at least put some kind of “Hey, we know there’s an issue! Working on it”-type message on the Seller Hub or via Messages. I expect more of them.
Seems widespread! I was also unable to view any transaction data this morning, including past payouts.
Sorry to hear that. I wouldn’t expect to get my groove back that quickly after a hospitalization. Take time to heal, then focus on how you plan to handle it financially, which should give you target income goals that will hopefully light the fire again.
Personally, I have a rough idea of larger life goals which are broken into smaller, more achievable goals, and I would say most or all of my motivation comes from targeting those. Sometimes those goals are put on hold (COVID, etc), but typically speaking I try to make progress towards them if time/money allows.
Send Offer doesn’t just send to watchers, either. It uses another metric called “Interested Buyers”, which does appear to take Watch status into account, but also seems to look at some other factors like views. Would be nice if eBay explained what the target audience is for this feature so we could better utilize it.
Is it defective like the buyer claimed? Most of the Walkman units I come across are broken these days due to the nature of the internals not standing up to the test of time (belts, plastic, etc.)
If the unit is defective, as a buyer I would expect a 100% refund with no deductions, and as a seller I would issue it in full after receiving the item back and confirming its condition.
If the unit isn’t defective, I would apply the maximum deduction to the refund and contact eBay in an effort to get more of the cut back.
When you call, the answer to every prompt is “representative.” Even answer “Tell us what your issue is so we can connect you with the right team mate” with “representative.” You’ll get connected to a human that way. Chat is useless in my experience.
Mine is defaulting to the MOST expensive option, like overnight, 1-day, etc. Been an issue for around 3 weeks at this point. Issues like this should be #1 on their list.
To anyone asking for a refund, say: “Return the item for a refund.”
Unless they can 100% prove there’s damage, that line is my go-to.
You will need to take the return most likely. They’ll cite INAD and force it. Once you get the item back, call eBay and explain. Be warned: They probably won’t care. Last resort, just issue a partial refund.
I went through this years ago. The process wasn’t pleasant and a huge waste of time, roughly 4 hours over a few days trying to get someone at eBay who understood what was happening to get my money back from the buyer. At the time I didn’t do free returns and the cost to get the item back was too much to just brush off. I only got the money back because the Amazon buyer had included a bunch of email transcripts of the Amazon return process/messages with the dropshipper. In hindsight I think the eBay rep was just fed up with the situation and just refunded the money to make me go away.
For that item in particular I would keep the price just below the average. Only <span class=”BOLD”>114</span> sold in 90 days and there’s 193 active listings. If you have infinite storage room, then you could price high, but buyers will still be sweeping up the cheaper listings and new ones will take their place. The real question is whether you want to make $25 months/years/decades from now, or $15-ish in the next few weeks/months?
But that’s just my opinion as someone who doesn’t sell antiques or anything like them.
Off-topic, but how did you enable automatic returns under MP? I had them when it was still through PayPal but after moving over to MP I’ve had to give the go-ahead on returns.
Right, not a return. The screen looks more or less like a return but it’s titled “Payment Dispute” and has some text like “the buyer’s financial institution has disputed this charge.” I’m not sure how the case was opened since at some point the buyer was able to write a description of the problem along with it, so it wasn’t like they went to their bank and disputed it – to me it looks like they were somehow able to initiate it on eBay itself. Or maybe it was done via PayPal if they paid that way and wrote the reason there.
“They just suggested that I should politely try to talk it out with him.”
I’m convinced this is their new go-to line when trying to get you off the phone. I think you can push past it – just keep insisting you’ve messaged them enough times until they get frustrated and elevate you to a manager or something. Generally speaking, if you’re not talking to a US-based rep they won’t do anything at all (in my experience.)
I guess your one line of defense right now would be to move to managed payments for future transactions, that way eBay would 100% be responsible since they’re handling the payments themselves. I’ve got a feeling they just don’t care about PayPal-related issues on the seller’s side.
