@shoppingbag* wrote:
Please tell me what I must do to please buyers
Any seller will make themselves crazy (or broke) if they try to cater to every buyer expectation / perception, because for every buyer who prefers something one way, there's guaranteed to be a bunch of others who prefer the opposite, and few others still whose primary preference is to find fault, or so it seems, with any and everything but themselves - the later aren't worth catering to, or engaing with, because you will never change their opinion about the way they think things should be done, while the rest have something of value in the sense that they can guide a seller's decisions or practices.
At the end of the day, the best thing for a seller to do is find a happy balance between what they need and want to do (or charge) and what the majority of their buyers need / want - in some cases you make a concession in favour of your buyers, in others your decision will be in favour of yourself; any buyer who doesn't like it is simply not part of your primary target market - if they still buy, but begrudgingly, that's a problem for them, and with their own conceit, not you - a ding to the DSRs can be seen less as a tarnish on your reputation, and more a reflection of the occasional buyer's attitude - I'll put it this way, I'm not going to look at one of your items, find everything (including shipping costs) acceptable, but then see a 4.8 postage cost DSR and all of a sudden think you're shady and the $2 (or whatever) postage cost must be a bit of a rip-off.
I honestly don't think the average buyer pays any attention to DSRs, since unless something is considerably amiss they generally look just fine, especially at 4.8+, and therefore not worth a second look. At 4.7 one might pay a little closer attention to other things (feedback, listing details, etc, but even still if it's for postage cost, it will probably just make a few more people ask for combined postage rates before buying. 4.6 or less is when things start to look alarming, presuming there's been enough sales for that to be the average, and not the result of one buyer in 10 leaving 1's for everything.
Personally, I work out what my fixed costs per order are (the ones that don't accrue with additional items), and put that in the P&H charge, add approximately 10%, and then all other costs go into the item price, with a few odd exceptions here and there - I don't do "free" post on eBay, but I do subsidise costs with item prices in some cases, just where I feel the item would benefit from a more aesthetically appealing price : postage ratio (eg a $30 item with $9 postage I'd probably list at $33 with $6 postage).
