topic Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later in Selling

Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

simple-eye — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 10:26:09 GMT

I recently sold a piece of coloured glass. The lady received it and left me positive feedback.

A week later I get a message telling me that I have mislead her with my description.

I sold the glass bowl as purple / amethyst glass. She believes it is cranberry in colour.

I put 8 photo's in the description. I also photographed it in different lights with different backgrounds.

I think this is crazy, I did not set out to mislead any one, it is purple glass, more to the point, the photos speak a thousand words.

I am not sure what is going to happen, does any one have any suggestions what I should do?

Thanks

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

digital*ghost — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:01:27 GMT

There's really only a couple of choices if you feel the item was described correctly - your listing states no returns are accepted, which you're well within your rights to uphold in change of mind situations, but you could accept a change of mind return if you wanted to, with original and return postage remaining the buyer's responsibility (i.e. they pay to return, and you refund the item price).

It's difficult to say for sure if the buyer insisted on not as described, and what the result would be if the raised a return request - I know purple is one of the more difficult colours to photograph, and I also know that translucent dark purple glass seems to be a little difficult to make, as often they have a kind of red wine tone to them rather than look like a true purple, but are still described as amethyst purple, so just personally, whenever I see the words "amethyst" "purple" and "glass" in the same title, I do expect to see a bit of red. 😄

Your images do look more reddish around the light bits, but then towards the centre it looks closer to a darker, amethyst purple. I know for certain that PayPal don't consider an item "significantly not as described" if colours are interpreted differently (the example they give on the site is "the item is aquamarine but was advertised as teal"), but I can't speak for eBay or whether or not this would count as "buyer's remorse" in their eyes.

Not much of that probably helps at this stage, though.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

lyndal1838 — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 12:34:46 GMT

Unfortunately I agree with your buyer.....the bowl looks like cranberry/pink with a blue base on my monitor. There is nothing purple or amethyst about it.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

*tippy*toes* — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 12:49:01 GMT

I'm seeing red/pink with a blue base on my monitor. That said, I know how very hard it is to photograph transparent purple things. I have a terrible time. They usually come out royal blue. Even if I put another colour next to it, it still comes out royal blue. I've got a whole heap of purple things here that I can't list because I can't get the colour resembling anything like purple.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

kopenhagen5 — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 12:56:06 GMT

I also think it's cranberry.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

imastawka — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 12:56:22 GMT

I've got a whole heap of purple things here that I can't list because I can't get the colour resembling anything like purple.

Awww Tippy, an' I lubs purple tooooo.

That bowl looks cranberry/pink with a blue base on my huge HD TV I gotta say

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

collect247 — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:14:18 GMT

What colour are these?

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

lyndal1838 — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:21:57 GMT

They look like a reddish purple to me Scrambler......far more purple toned than the OP's bowl.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

collect247 — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:31:08 GMT

Yes lyndal they are selling as amethyst purple which doesn't look like OPs bowl

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

digital*ghost — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:41:27 GMT

@scrambler3333 wrote:
What colour are these?

I would call those port wine (maroon) in a listing title 😄

If you do a search on eBay for amethyst glass or crystal beads, you get quite a range of results (anything from lilac to brown), but the one below is (believe it or not) one of the more common when "amethyst" is being used as a colour... (I personally don't think it even remotely resembles amethyst, or purple for that matter, but for some reason it keeps getting called that o_O ).

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

imastawka — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:49:43 GMT

@scrambler3333 wrote:
What colour are these?

Definitely purple on my monitor

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

digital*ghost — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:50:47 GMT

@*tippy*toes* wrote:
I've got a whole heap of purple things here that I can't list because I can't get the colour resembling anything like purple.

Some tricks for purple are different colour backgrounds (try grey), yellow is supposed to help if you have a different coloured item to edit out (I usually try to put red, yellow and blue in there). If you usually take close-ups, you can also try a little more distance so that you get more of the background in the image and the colour balance / saturation might adjust differently.

I had some transparent purple glass things to photograph today, but it was kinda overcast so everything was a bit more grey than usual, but the purple photographed perfectly (for once!).

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

*tippy*toes* — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 14:39:14 GMT

@scrambler3333 wrote:
What colour are these?

I'd call those plum.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

*tippy*toes* — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 14:45:38 GMT

I think I've tried nearly every colour background! I don't think I've tried grey. If I take the photo inside, I need the flash and it's the flash that kills the colour (both with my phone camera and my expensive Nikon DSLR). I've tried taking them outside without a flash and the outside light kills the colour. A few things I ended up listing ages ago I took inside without the flash. Of course the photos came out very poorly, so I took one with the flash to show the item sharply, then explained in the description that the colour was more like the poor quality photos.

It only seems to be transparent purple because I took a photo of my purple coffee cup to test and it showed as exactly the same purple as what it should be!

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

springyzone — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 21:29:03 GMT

Unfortunately I agree with your buyer.....the bowl looks like cranberry/pink with a blue base on my monitor. There is nothing purple or amethyst about it.

--------------------

It does on my monitor too, which means the buyer would have seen it like that too.

No matter what colour it was described as, she would have had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

I know that isn't always true from photos on a computer. I've occasionally had to ask sellers about a colour where I thought it was black and it turned out to be brown, things like that.

Quite a few of the photos in the ad for the glass bowl were too dark, I would not have used them. But the first few were pretty clear I thought.

If the buyer gave good feedback at first, I'm guessing it is buyer remorse & she has decided she really would like more of a purple shade. But she could see from the start the bowl had some cranberry shades to it.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

davidc4430 — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 22:24:48 GMT

@imastawka wrote:
@scrambler3333 wrote:
What colour are these?

Definitely purple on my monitor

i call em useless cos they are empty

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

englishrosegardens — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 00:43:16 GMT

You can't rely on photos to speak a thousand words when it comes to colour because they vary from one monitor to the next. Like many other sellers I have a disclaimer in my description that says colours may show differently on the buyer's monitor, or words to that effect.

Also bear in mind that what one person calls cranberry might be called something else by another person. I've done a lot of knitting in my life and I find catalogues for wool usually have the colour names spot on compared to how I name colours, but I've met plenty of people who have a vastly different idea of colour names, even ones that you'd expect to be self-explanatory. Cranberry sounds obvious but cranberry glass is nowhere near as dark as in a cranberry fruit, so anyone not familiar with it might expect the glass to be darker. I know the glass wasn't cranberry but I'm just using it as an example.

Sometimes in my listings I'll say "the colour is really hard to describe but it's somewhere between pink and red" rather than actually calling it a specific colour.

I'd just apologise and say as little as possible, then see if she says any more. I know she left feedback before she contacted you but perhaps she was annoyed with it but left feedback anyway, but then it kept bugging her and she felt she had to say something.

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

simple-eye — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 01:03:45 GMT

So why did she buy it then?

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

*tippy*toes* — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 01:29:57 GMT

Maybe she was aware that sometimes photos look different on different monitors, so went with the description of Amethyst purple. I know, it's a bit of a shock that a buyer did more than just look at the photos, but it does happen occasionally!

Re: Buyer has changed their mind.....a week later

lyndal1838 — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 04:15:08 GMT

@simple-eye wrote:
So why did she buy it then?

How would we know why she bought it?

I just went and fired up my husband's laptop and the colours are quite different on it to what they are on mine.

If the buyer took notice of description of purple/amethyst she may have been expecting that if her monitor also showed a more purple tone.