Communication with Customers and Interested Buyers

[sparkleocean888]

Has anyone missed sales because you dont know if interested buyers got your message or offer ? Communication breakdown or lack of verification your potential customer got your message or offer ?

[chameleon54]

Its pretty rare that ebay messages dont get through, so no I dont believe I have lost sales due to answers to buyers questions ( including any offers I have sent ) not being received by potential buyers.

As for offers, I have used ebays offer system to watchers a few times and have to say, the strike rate for offers resulting in purchases has been very good, so again, no I dont believe I have lost sales due to offers not getting through. 

In fact I would say the opposite is the case. I get a very good response to messages and offers.

What I dont like is unsolicited,  pestering from sellers I have purchased from in the past trying to flog their latest bit of tat through the message system. That results in the seller going on my list of ebayers I will never purchase from again.

[sparkleocean888]

Thanks chameleon Im talking about knowing there is no tech problems affecting good communication between biz and customer not pestering people verification communication was sent or received

[sugar249]

This is a bit of a how long is a piece of string question.

How would anyone know if they lost sales because offers or other things didnt get to the potential buyer.   Buyers may have received them and not acted on them, it doesnt mean the offer didnt get to them.

[papermoon.lady]

People don't necessarily watch an item because they intend to buy it in the near future, particularly if it is not rare. Many of the offers I have received have a Make an Offer option anyway, so I usually think there is no rush.

Once I accepted an offer because the item was rare and I liked it. The item was $100 and the offer was 20% off, so at least it was something. Sometimes I get offers of 3% off for $5 items... I mean...

[springyzone]

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@sparkleocean888 wrote:

Has anyone missed sales because you dont know if interested buyers got your message or offer ? Communication breakdown or lack of verification your potential customer got your message or offer ?

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I suppose there may be occasional glitches in the system but I suspect most of the time it is working fine. There is no real way though for anyone to know if their message or offer has been read, the system doesn't show that.

Going on my recent experience, I would say things are working okay at the moment. I made an offer on a book a couple of days back and the offer was accepted about an hour or so later and I saw that and was able to pay straight away, so all seems to be working smoothly at present, if that helps.

[chameleon54]

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@sparkleocean888 wrote:

Thanks chameleon Im talking about knowing there is no tech problems affecting good communication between biz and customer not pestering people verification communication was sent or received

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Unfortunately, recently I was pestered by a seller I had purchased from who thought just because I purchased one item, I might like to know about every similar item they listed. Quite annoying and eventually messaged them and told them to stop or I would report their spam messages. 

The message system seems to be one of ebay's more reliable features. Its pretty rare that I get any hint messages have not got through, so although it is only anecdotal, I dont think there are any major problems with the message or offer system.

Its one of the few ebay systems that seems to work very well.