Am I just too much of a nice guy to survive in this environment?

[dithommo]

I am busy jumping through all the hurdles eBay is throwing at me as a newish small volume mum & dad non professional seller.

So far 100% positive FB (from those that bother to leave feedback) but that is probably more good luck than anything else. Never the less I usually offer most items free postage and just try to factor into purchase price but for a couple of larger items I use the calculate postage due to distance/weight. For what ever reason a couple of times the postage calculator has given the buyer a significantly higher postage cost than the actual postage. Now being the all round good guy that I am (or sucker I am not sure) I have refunded one customer $15 and another $10 using the PayPal "refund" process.

Now you would think I would at least get a Feedback yet alone a postive Feedback but no...........nothing.............obviously my expectations are just too high. Should I have just kept the excess postage and waited for a negative feedback for postage costs???

My humble experienced sellers..........your thoughts.

[davewil1964]

That would depend.

Are you selling for money or feedback?

Are your morals determined by whether or not you receive feedback?

[chameleon54 · Accepted solution]

I usually refund excess postage if it amounts to more than a dollar or two. I also combine postage for multiple purchases, without being requested. One of buyers pet hates is being charged excessive postage costs and it soon catches up with sellers. If you have reasonable profit margins on the items you sell, you dont need to screw every last cent from your buyers with unfair tactics. Basically if you treat your buyers in the way you would like to be treated as a buyer you cant go too far wrong.

[digital*ghost · Accepted solution]

The way I would look at it, to be honest, is if you think refunding the excess postage is the right thing to do, then it's the right thing to do regardless of whether the buyer acknowledges. 

Some people will never acknowledge a well-intended gesture. This one time, I created a sale in my store on some items that had been hanging around for a while, and it takes about 1-2 hours from creating the sale to actually go into effect. Lo and behold, someone bought something literally about 2 minutes before it was scheduled to go on sale, and it was a single quantity item so once gone, there wouldn't have been any remaining to be discounted.

Anyway, even though they would never have known, I felt bad that they'd missed out on a better price due to eBay's lag, so I refunded the difference and sent them a message to explain why.

I didn't to it for their gratitude, though, which is just as well because I never got a single word from them in reply or FB.  I wouldn't do that sort of thing these days, to be honest, more because I've got a bit more experience under my belt and feel less like falling over myself to dry and distinguish myself, but when I think something is the right thing to do, I just go ahead and do it - surrounding circumstances, before and after etc, doesn't affect my decision much, if at all. 

With postage overages, most of the time I just refund, and these days it's contact-less with just one line in the PP email to explain what the refund is for, as I'm actually more looking to not make a buyer feel obliged to respond to something I now personally consider a small, perfunctory matter of course. 😉

[davewil1964]

dry and distinguish

Surely you mean dry and extinguish....

[digital*ghost]

Dang it  

I misspelled acknowledge twice, and only just managed to spot it and edit the post in time.

Hmm, dry and distinguished still makes sense, though, perhaps not in that context, but a glass instead. 😛 (scotch?)

[davewil1964]

Scotch makes everything okay.

[amber-eyed-girl]

I would appreciate a postage refund in the order of ten dollars or above...that is significant enough to be noted. I remember sellers who act with courtesy and honesty; I would consider that much of a difference to have been "pocketed" by a seller and wouldn't return, if no refund. There are those who will staunchly defend the right to keep excess postage on the grounds that the buyer pays a total amount, that they know about, and should be satisfied with. That's not how I see it.

A few dollars is not an issue. More than that is. I have returned to sellers where a polite refund has been made, in preference to buying from someone else, because I know I would be treated fairly by them 🙂

In the long run happy buyers means extra sales because they return if they need something else, and will recommend you 🙂

No feedback I see as meaning the buyer was happy enough with the purchase not to have a complaint. Sometimes I do not leave feedback as I have bought so many things I just don't get around to it.

[Anonymous]

They may not leave feedback or they may not say thank you, but they will come back and at the end of the day thats what you want well i do smileyhappy:

[davidc4430]

i think all buyers should try selling something on feebay just to get the view from the other side of the fence. i see feebay in a totally different light as a seller to what i thought as a buyer only. i have buyers leaving no feedback but i'm not losing sleep over it, its just rudness. maybe one day they will be trying to sell and be faced with the no feedback buyers themselves. still, no feedbacks better than negative. i see lots of sellers getting negatives even when the buyers got perfect service, lots of nutters out there.