Hello fellow ebayer's
I'm pretty new to ebay as both a buyer and recently a seller too and wanted to share my experiences with a gap of mis-trust between buyer and seller when dealing with return issues / diffcute buyers. I have been on ebay for over a year now, originally wanting to sell a few things around the house and with just over 100 transactions i started to get a string of return requests and abusive buyers. With selling pre-owned items you can usually pick the fake buyer pretty quickly to prevent returns/scams, i now contact each buyer for my pre-owned items to ensure they read the listing and also not sell to buyers who seem fake.
However since starting to sell new items which i dont expect any issues with ive come across some really aggressive buyer which caused a bit of emotional stress as well as wasted my time. when i first started on ebay i imagined it would be a pleasant experience just to make bit of extra income as a hobby.
So my first run in with an unpleasant buyer was when i sold a wall decor piece, on arrive they claim it was damaged. Ok i agreed to replace the item as it was covered by the supplier, they sent photos but they were not clear and wanted a full refund instead. The supplier review the images and they looked like the buyer may have caused them and just changed their mind, i was told it happens a lot. By now the buyer was abusive, refused to provide more clear photo and their story was not consistent, as i proceeded to rule out / source other cause of the damages. After a while, they agreed to return the item for inspection before a decision was made, The supplier was willing to refund and the buyer remained suspected. After physical inspection it was found the issue was caused partly by the supplier leaving out a small piece of packaging and the courier likely placing a heavy item ontop creating the damage. So the buyer was happy i refunded them and my supplier and i took a lost. During this long ordeal i liked to think i was objective and was reasonable in my investigation, but the lack of cooperation and aggressive nature of the buyer really add suspicion to their case/claim.
So after that drama i started thinking about my customer service as i have been working under the principle "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" Why would a buyer have such an attitude or be abusive. You normally would not do that to a chef at a cafe or when returning an item to a retailer.
Later the same item was sold and delays where caused by the post, i informed the buyer ASAP as i hope to deliver to them within 2 or 3 days but they became abusive and threatened to report me, even tho the item would arrive within the ebay allowed time frame and it did in the end.
Was that too much customer service?
Finally, i recently sold wooden furniture piece. The buyer claimed there was a crack in the grain but in photos it was hard to see and just the nature of the product. The buyer was likely too pedantic. I spent sometime with my supplier to get them to agree to replace the items but in the end the buyer did not return it and stopped communication's tho they were not very responsive in the first place while i made updates regularly. So i just canceled the return.
I had a few other minor return issues such as buyer not liking the colour of the item, which they did not read the listing correctly. Or other very imperfections were buyer are fishing for a discount. however these buyer were more respectful and fix the issues by reasoning with them. In genuine cases like other seller i go out of my way to make buyers happy as iam starting out still.
After my experiences i realised a few things,
- Buyers do not often realise that most ebay seller are ebay buyers themselves and individuals, but they reaction in the mind set of returns to a big retailers,
- Seller get blamed for delayed postage although its out of our control once it leave us.
- Anger and abusive behaviour from buyer slows the resolution process, first communication is lost in the emails and a reluctant of seller to deal with the claim promptly.
- Buyer are unlikely to understand the seller and continue to behaviour as such until they become sellers themselves.
So i hoped my shared experience's will help reduce the issues between buyer & seller and i hope to hear more about experiences from other seller as well as buyers.
What wll your girlfriend say Dave.....getting familiar with another woman??? Shame on you.
