Profanities and name calling as a seller response

[crazydropbear]

Remember customer service? I do.

It seems like eBay is the place for people who have no skill at social interaction to sell their wares.

I bought a watch in November last year, calculated to arrive before Christmas, the seller took 26 days to get around to mailing it.

His response to my emails was "It's all good!", good for who? The watch was lost en route and I was eventually refunded.

Then, yesterday I dealt with an Australian seller (ZERO Feedback, just signed up in February). They used text talk in their emails, as a response to questions about the products for sale. Zero feedback, curt, rude, illiterate responses that didn't address my questions and the final email told me to "get **bleep** you **bleep**face". Lovely, imagine getting that from a Myer cosmetic consultant or the coffee shop attendant at your favourite cafe.

I just love being abused by sellers, that's why I keep coming back to eBay.

5 Years ago I posted here about a seller who threatened to kill me and my family for posing a negative when he failed to mail an item I won. He didn't feel it had sold high enough and said his post office lost it when they left it on the counter. Do you have a receipt for postage then? "No, that blew out of my car", get a copy from P.O? "No, I have your address, I am coming up next week to fix you and yours" 

eBay have these conversations, they agree it is "against policy" & "inappropriate, the seller will be suspended for this activity"

Yet, I see the sellers are still here, abusing buyers. 

It is quite clear that standards will not be raised nor upheld, our only recourse is to lower our own?

[enigmabear · Accepted solution]

It is not only sellers, there are many posts from buyers here on the forum posting abuse,threats etc (and not just at the seller they bought from, but anyone who dares to respond to their posts,including those people trying to help them)

Many of them are even egged on and defended by some responders 

Personally I have no desire to lower myself to their level

eBay indeed SHOULD do something about any member who behaves in such away. Sadly their care factor is zero

[kopenhagen5]

Just ignore any further messages.

Add them to your BBL and tick the box to block comms.

(Simply, there are low level critters on this planet, part of life)

[crazydropbear]

Interesting solution, but it does not address the fact that these Trolls will continue to pour out abuse, as enigmabear says- on buyers and sellers. I shouldn't have to put up with the abuse, I shouldn't have to accept that being called a F-ck Face is acceptable. We are all citizens of the world and should understand the need for respecting one another. If you can't be civil, don't use eBay, sell it in some back street alley.

[jellybirddesigns]

I've got to say I have been pretty fortunate in my dealings with buyers and other sellers and I've never come across such poor responses as you have in my 15+ years of selling and buying.

Nevertheless, last year I started using a PO Box to get all my mail and purchases as I prefer to minimise my personal information exposure such as my physical address.

[springyzone]

---

@crazydropbear wrote:

eBay have these conversations, they agree it is "against policy" & "inappropriate, the seller will be suspended for this activity"

Yet, I see the sellers are still here, abusing buyers. 

It is quite clear that standards will not be raised nor upheld, our only recourse is to lower our own?

---

Totally unacceptable, especially the one who threatened you some years ago. In my opinion that should warrant a life time ban on ebay.

In fact, the way you were spoken to by all those sellers was disgusting.

I think you have been unfortunate though and have to say I have been lucky in that just about all the sellers I have dealt with over the years have been much more professional. I think it is only a small percentage who carry on like that but it is like anything else, anywhere, you always get some undesirable characters in the mix and there are certainly a few doozies on ebay, both buyers & sellers.

I think all you can do as a buyer is if things don't go well, make a claim via ebay or paypal and if things turn nasty, stop all personal correspondence with that seller. Inform ebay, not that it always does much good but we can live in hope.

Life is too short to waste your time trying to reason with some people.

[shoppingbag*]

In my opinion, society is going feral, and getting worse by the day. You just have to look at the way people dress, the abbreviated butchered english language. The TV stations, especially the ABC who have fallen off their perfection pedestal. When I turn on the TV to see an ad with someone sitting on a toilet, it only confirms my thoughts. Teachers who can't spell basic words teaching children. I refuse to recognize such words as "fireies, servos, ambos" etc, and I am definitely not a "guy" The children are out of control.  What has happened to society? Everywhere I go people are glued to their phones, even in the hospitals and at the doctors and in line at the post office and bank, where signs against are clearly displayed and ignored. I see young children in trollies addicted to a screen. I wonder if people will forget how to talk, that speech will become a thing of the past, maybe "ug, ug", back to cave man language. I am not surprised that many people do not have a clue as to what is going on in the world because they walk around and never see it, may as well wear blinkers.

[gumardee_coins_and_banknotes]

I think you need a time machine to go to the middle ages, people are a lot nicer now lol.

[digital*ghost]

---

@crazydropbear wrote:

Lovely, imagine getting that from a Myer cosmetic consultant or the coffee shop attendant at your favourite cafe.

---

The difference is, staff are paid specifically to be nice and accommodating to pretty much everyone, and the staff that are hired are vetted to ensure they have both the appropriate language / people skills, and are capable of performing the job on a continual basis. 

The only qualifications needed to sell on eBay is internet access, an email address, and a means to pay for fees, so you'll come across a wide variety of people with a wide variety skills (language, social etc). Often, people will sell stuff just because they have it and don't want it, which means they are not reliant on getting income from their sales, which can mean they feel no compunction to behave in any way other than they always do. 

This doesn't mean you have to lower your standards, in terms of who you choose to do business with and / or for what you find acceptable, more that expectations need to be modified accordingly. Some people just don't understand social norms, or know how to respond appropriately in certain situations. Sometimes what's appropriate just changes - personally, I dislike receiving messages that aren't even prefaced by a "hi", and read like a text from someone that doesn't like me in the slightest, but there's a whole generation of people now that are used to just making statements and expecting customer service to respond appropriately (I partly blame social media, especially things like Twitter - which a lot of business are on as a point of customer service and where posts used to have a 160 character limit [not sure what it is now, but brevity is still the aim of the game]. 

Just to clarify, I'm speaking generally here, about the nature of 'customer service' on eBay, as well as the writing and people skills (or lack thereof) that people will encounter, not the issue of threats of violence - I don't see that as a lack of social or customer service skills, rather that is a behavioural (and legal) issue that is more serious.

From the dealings I've had over the years, I personally expect that many casual sellers wouldn't even see themselves in a 'customer service' role when selling, to be honest. 

[shoppingbag*]

Yes, when grass was something you mowed, when a pot was something you cooked in, the tattooed lady was a sideshow attraction, and you didn't have to lock your doors. We didn't have to worry about terrorists, water was free, people were respectful and disciplined their children, yes, would love to go back.