@Sellers: When is it okay to request a refund? (etiquette, not rules)

[nevanevame]

I purchased a lot of 20 pieces of an item, and one of them was damaged. I initiated a return, sent photos, and stated very clearly that only one of the 20 pieces was defective. I was expecting to be offered a partial refund, but the seller just gave me a full refund without discussing it. Now, I feel bad for complaining, and I'm wondering if my "complain about everything" policy is the right way to behave. I know about the rules that are written, but I want to know about the unwritten rules; what does a good buyer look like?

I always complain if there is something wrong with the item I received, for 2 reasons.

1. If there is something wrong with SOME of your stock, perhaps I can draw your attention to it; perhaps you don't send faulty stuff to other people, so it reduces the risk of future complaints and bad feedback.

2. Some ebay sellers are fantastic, and others are absolute crooks, and the only way buyers can tell the difference is to look at feedback ratings. I want to do everything in my power to give good sellers an advantage, by giving the right feedback for everyone, but also, I buy so much **bleep**, leaving feedback is the only way I can keep track of what has arrived and what still needs my attention. I understand that neutral feedback is negative feedback, so when in doubt, I give full positive feedback, but if there is a problem with the item, I want to see how you handle the issue before I tell other sellers that you're fantastic. If the issue is small, and the seller agrees to take responsibility, maybe I will just close the case, because I don't really care about the problem; I just want to know that they are reasonable before I give positive feedback. 

I know eBay will take my side most of the time, so I am the only person who will stop me from treating sellers badly. I want to do the right thing, but I don't have access to a neutral perspective, so sometimes it's hard to say what is fair. This situation has made me question my "always complain" policy, so I am looking for feedback from sellers. Am I a bad buyer? Help me become better. What should I do if I am unhappy with my purchase, but the issue is small?

[nevanevame]

I will do that.

Thanks.

[justcruising48]

Hi, you seem to have had a lot of issues with many items going by the feedback you leave. Are you buying from China? You can not expect you are buying good quality that way. I see you have had a lot of refunds already. I would now do the right thing and go via paypal and repay for the 19 you have that are good. It is unfair to keep free 19 you have not now paid for. Some nice gesture on your side would go well, and honesty does get repaid along lifes trail somewhere. 

[chameleon54]

At the start of your post you had me thinking, " fair enough ". Everything you said was well thought out and had a reasonable explanation. The further I got through the post, the harder it got to agree and the more you got me off side.

I dont think you are being delibrately difficult and have genuine good intentions, but the "complain about everything" slogan indicates you could be a very difficult buyer to deal with.............. Sometimes life is too short............ If a seller has made a genuine minor error in their description or made some other small mistake, hey it happens.

Sellers are human too and I can only speak for myself when I say I make small mistakes  and occasionally bigger ones pretty regularly. Thankfully most buyers just let it slide and dont choose to rub my nose in it. I always do my best to fix problems when they are brought to my attention, but it is unlikely to prevent minor human error in the future.

My suggestion ...... dont sweat the small stuff. Save your energy for the more important problems or the obvious ebay rip off merchants.

[davewil1964]

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@nevanevame wrote:

If you, or any other seller don't want my business, that's fine by me. I don't feel entitled to your service and I wouldn't feel right forcing you into anything you're uncomfortable with, for any reason, but I don't really understand it. I'm upset enough about an unfair decision that went in my favour to come here and ask for advice, even though it was the seller that made the decision... Even if I **bleep**ed up, surely that shows that I mean well; I'm willing to own up to my mistakes, and I take the initiative to try and fix it when I have nothing to gain but my own integrity. If you would refuse to deal with me for that, you must have access to a lot of really great customers.

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That's funny. I said basically the same thing as Tazz, yet his response is a solution.

I find it hard to believe, with your demonstrated experience, that -

You buy cheap Chinese junk and seem to expect high-end gear;

You don't know how to contact a seller without opening a dispute.

And, yes, I do have a lot of really great customers. No negs in 8 years and over 3000 transactions

[digital*ghost]

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@nevanevame wrote:

I know eBay will take my side most of the time, so I am the only person who will stop me from treating sellers badly. I want to do the right thing, but I don't have access to a neutral perspective, so sometimes it's hard to say what is fair. This situation has made me question my "always complain" policy, so I am looking for feedback from sellers. Am I a bad buyer? Help me become better. What should I do if I am unhappy with my purchase, but the issue is small?

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A small shift of perspective can make a huge difference, some people would believe choice of words is very telling. Take this for example.

"Always complain policy" vs "Always notify policy". Those are two similar actions, with very different intentions, and very different expected outcomes (in general).

I sell (on another ID), and I genuinely appreciate people letting me know there's a potential issue with some stock, whether they want anything done about it or not - and it's usually clear to me from my buyer's messages which ones are seeking resolution. That is not to say I don't offer anything to those who don't want anything, I'm just saying there's an obvious difference between "I just wanted to let you know." and "There's a problem and I need it to be fixed". There's also a world of difference between someone who is being polite and respectful regardless of whether they are seeking a resolution, and someone who is, well.. not. I'm not suggesting you haven't been, but a seller's response can be quite telling. I am more likely to just refund and block a buyer if I feel like dealing any more with them will cause me trouble in one way or another. If I don't get that vibe, I will work with them to get to the best possible solution there is; the first type of buyer ultimately has a less satisfactory experience, the second type, even though something initially went wrong, often indicates it was one of their best eBay experiences (not trying to brag or anything, I actually feel a little sad some people don't experience a willingly helpful seller very often, as that should be fairly normal). 

There are a lot of things sellers are sensitive to, if someone sends a message that starts with "before I leave feedback", your average seller would have blocked that buyer before they even think about replying. Sellers are always acutely aware that feedback can be left by the buyer, and mentioning it just gets them focussed on that, not the problem someone is presenting them with, so it's not good for buyers or sellers to start things that way. (In the past, when I wanted to tell a seller about a minor problem, but I was overall happy with the purchase, I'd leave positive feedback first and them contact them). 

I often think about how I would want a seller to respond to me if I messaged them with a particular buyer complaint, and allow that to help determine how I deal with it as a seller, perhaps a similar exercise would help you in your approach to sellers. 

[zanadoo_56]

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@nevanevame wrote:

I will do that.

Thanks.

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That's what I'd do - pay for the ones that were OK.  I've done that with refunds for missing items that have (sometimes ages later) finally turned up.  PayPal is very handy for that. 🙂

eBay's message to sellers system is a minefield IMO.  I now look for an option like 'Other' or something equally vague or where the seller hasn't filled in any details and I chose one of those.  That way you can contact the seller while keeping eBay's nose right out of taking some unwarranted action.

[nevanevame]

I buy almost exclusively from China, but sometimes Korea and the US.

I don't recall ever having an issue with an item that came from Australia, or the US, but the stuff I buy generally doesn't exist on Australian eBay, and if I can find it coming out of the US I'm paying $25 shipping for an item that is worth $3. Is it wrong to hold chinese people to the same standards? 

[zanadoo_56]

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@nevanevame wrote:

I buy almost exclusively from China, but sometimes Korea and the US.

I don't recall ever having an issue with an item that came from Australia, or the US, but the stuff I buy generally doesn't exist on Australian eBay, and if I can find it coming out of the US I'm paying $25 shipping for an item that is worth $3. Is it wrong to hold chinese people to the same standards? 

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In the beginning I rarely bought from Oz sellers because I was mostly collecting hard to find vintage stuff.  Now my shopping is more varied. 

I can only remember one issue with an Oz seller.  He had items in a number of colours and I bought one red and one yellow.  I got one red and one black.  I messaged him and asked if is was a substitute or something.  Nope, but before he sent me a yellow one he asked for photos as proof. 

Arrgghh.  I don't have a smart phone, the digital camera batteries were flat and I couldn't find the gizmo to transfer any photos to a computer either.  In the end I fired up my old desktop and scanner and scanned the items in, including the envelope.  Then after I had saved them to the hard drive I had to put them on a USB stick and plugged that into my internat enabled laptop, and finally I could send them to him.  He sent me a new yellow item and said I could keep the black one. 

I ordered bright colours so hopefully they'd be easy to find if I misplaced them.  Sure enough the black one has vanished somewhere in the house.  I know exactly where the red and yellow ones are. 🙂

[digital*ghost]

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@nevanevame wrote:

Is it wrong to hold chinese people to the same standards? 

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You can attempt to hold anyone to any standard you like.

I'm not going to debate whether it's 'wrong' or not, but I will say that the feasibility and practicality of having them comply consistently, or change, due to that attempt can be more important - and I mean that for your own sake.

I import from several businesses in Asia, because it's the only place that manufactures the products I want to stock. I like mid-range products (i.e. good quality, good materials, well made, not the cheapest, but usually not the really expensive primo stuff, though I'll go for that too, depending on the product in question). Every single order I make (and I make anywhere from 4-6 a month, each with multiple products), there's some items that aren't quite right. 

I don't notify the sellers about 80% of the time, though. There's just no point for me to waste my time doing that, unless there's an entire product / batch that's missing or faulty or somesuch. If I've bought a quantity of 100 and 2 are faulty, they're just written off. In most cases, there has to be a problem with a significant number of the items in a batch for me to contact them (what is a significant number varies on the total ordered, and unit price TBH). 

This isn't because I don't care, or anything like that, it's because after doing this for a couple or years, I know that this will not stop happening just because I spend hours a week trying to sort it out. My suppliers are actually pretty good, and offer good solutions to the problems I do let them know about, but if there's only 5% of a product that's unusable, then I can factor that into whatever is relevant and move on.

TL;DR I acknowledge that there is a fail-rate in almost every product I buy, and since I make the choice to continue to buy knowing this, I accept it as part of the process and make allowances for it. 

[nevanevame]

I am not trying to fix China. I am just trying to get the best deal I can without ripping anyone off. Most of the stuff I get is great, or at least no worse than expected. I do understand that things that are cheaply made will be lower quality, and I'm ok with that when I don't need quality. I spend big on food, perfume and electronics, because that's where quality counts, but I won't buy that online unless it's the only place I can get it. There's no point in paying 15 times as much for something that's only marginally better. A lot of stuff is the same no matter where it comes from, and a lot of stuff is only available from china. If I buy in bulk and I get one dodgy piece out of 100, that is to be expected and it's not worth my time to make an issue of it. In this case, I could have bought 20 items individually, but I wanted 20 of them and it was cheaper to buy 20 in 1 lot. I was happy with the quality except for the one that was damaged, and it was damaged beyond function or repair. I don't think it was absurd for me to expect that I can return that one, without returning them all, and I still don't see how I was supposed to know that following eBay's directions is the wrong way to go about doing that.

Anyway, the seller is happy now, and so am I, so everything is okay.