@crikey*mate wrote:
I've decided to come to the conclusion that boys score very differently to girls and are probably more easy going than girls are when they shop.
Nahhh. 
My customers are a mix of male / female and thankfully (touch wood) I haven't been given any low ratings for P&H cost - ever. 
I used to charge a little bit more for satchels than they cost me, but all my clothing was wrapped in tissue paper, then a sealed plastic bag to waterproof before being put in the satchel, so people could see there was some time and care taken I guess.
¯\(°_o)/¯
These days 99% of my items go as a letter, and on average they do arrive quicker than parcels, so that's in my favour, but I think the message I send to the majority of buyers contributes quite a bit to my decent (if I do say so myself) ratings. Auto-emails from eBay are generic and ignored/deleted because most buyers know exactly what they say (if they aren't sent to the spam folder - they are in gmail unless you change it), and they also know it doesn't have much - if anything - to do with the seller actually doing something with their purchase.
Often, the message I send is within minutes of a buyer purchasing, if I didn't do that, the first time a buyer would get a real update notification that means something is when they receive the parcel X days after buying, so there's much less time that passes between the purchase and proper information from me. (I know there are those that would dislike the extra message, but even if it's annoyed the odd buyer, I'm sure they have the common sense to know it's sent with the best of intentions - personal thanks, confirmed postage date, invitation to contact if I can do anything else).
Plus, my handling time is set at 2 days even though I post within 24 hours, so now I get a lot of buyers impressed that the items arrived before the "due date" thanks to eBay's delivery estimations (which I dislike ever so >_> ).
