Anyone else completely sick of dealing with customer complai

[IATM]

Hi All,

Run an online business on the bay and really struggling with the low lifes that come and try and con you out of every penny, Don't have anywhere near as many issues on Amazon or our website.

It is so bad on eBay it blows my mind, constant I did not get my item, send another right now, I want a free replacement asap.

They you get the ones that try and threaten you with negative feedback - I just tell them to go right ahead now - sick of having provide excellent customer service 24/7, good products, fast delivery for low margins.

The one that really boils my blood is "did you send out the item" - no you clown I sit here with outstanding orders because its great for my business!

ARGGHHHHH!!

[21TonyK]

Dealing with the public can be a royal pain in the ass. I did it on behalf of an employer for several years and you really thought twice about telling someone to sod off because they would complain and next thing you knew you had an email from head office. They'd get a voucher and you got crap from your line manager.

Then I moved onto having to face the great unwashed on my own behalf (in a restaurant). 9/10 times if there was a problem we spotted it first and put it right but on the odd occasion we didn't, if genuine, you didn't mind putting it right and saying sorry.

But... like with you, there are always chancers. First time they might get off lightly but second time? No fking way. Not proud of it but I actually threw out an elderly woman trying to get her second free meal by threatening bad tripadvisor reviews after she made a waitress cry.

Now I am working in a less public facing role (maybe for the better LOL) but have managed to build a bit of a reputation in the organisation for being rather "straight talking" as HR put it.

[dmsims]

Please bear in mind I don't know business / margins / products

Some people now send everything from ebay by some method that can be tracked

Maybe you could do a cost/benefit analysis ?

[Dejay1788]

We don't even bother with eBay, it's honestly full of thieves.

We ship thousands of parcels a year with Royal Mail from sales from our website. How many of those go missing? Less than 10 a year.

My missus started selling a few bits of old stock, damages etc on her eBay account, and out of about 20 things she sold 14 people claimed they didn't receive them. Says it all really.

[Jasandjules]

So discontinue the bay sales to reduce hassle if it is not worth it.

Or increase postage costs a fraction to cover recorded delivery?

[IATM]

Jasandjules said:

So discontinue the bay sales to reduce hassle if it is not worth it.

Or increase postage costs a fraction to cover recorded delivery?

That really is not an option. I dont anyone who would stop running a channel of revenue 55,000+ orders PA because I get in reality a small % of numpties abusing the service.

The opening post is more of a rant on the type of people out there.

Don't get me wrong - you can very quickly tell the genuine people from the con artists. Some people almost feel bad for contacting you and to them I am extremely nice but when some pays a small value for an item they want next day, excellent quality, fully tracked with 24/7 customer service it does get bloody annoying!

I am glad it's not just me though!

[ModernAndy]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

Why on Earth are you (various) posters not sending it signed/tracked?

Its basically a pre-requisite of using eBay as a seller these days.

For anything of value, PayPal only and PayPal verified addresses only!

Yeah, good point. We only save £5,000 a year by not doing that...

[DSLiverpool]

IATM said:

Hi All,

Run an online business on the bay and really struggling with the low lifes that come and try and con you out of every penny, Don't have anywhere near as many issues on Amazon or our website.

It is so bad on eBay it blows my mind, constant I did not get my item, send another right now, I want a free replacement asap.

They you get the ones that try and threaten you with negative feedback - I just tell them to go right ahead now - sick of having provide excellent customer service 24/7, good products, fast delivery for low margins.

The one that really boils my blood is "did you send out the item" - no you clown I sit here with outstanding orders because its great for my business!

ARGGHHHHH!!

If you own the company it's very difficult to not take it personally. Whatever you think. A major step forward is to have a policy that someone else (another employee) executes. It can be a flow chart eg buyer says nine delivery so we do a, b and c if they fail we send another etc have a good think of all the painful scenarios and writs a flow chart response.
If it's just you get your wife to do them at night or whatever.
If your struggling to keep on top of messages on all platforms look at xsellco it simplifies it and self files.

The pita buyers will gain as you expand, have a system to deal with it.

I'll just add for the first time in 10 years were going away for Xmas the thought of not thinking on Xmas day "I hope the staff come in on the 27th we have x hundred orders to ship" or stressing over the exact same issues as you mention is something I am happy to have sold on.

[hotchy]

Just do what most high volume sellers do to me. Completely ignore me, dont even open the message etc. If There are few neg feed backs over thousands of products doesn't stop me ordering off them.

[ModernAndy]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

ModernAndy said:

kapiteinlangzaam said:

Why on Earth are you (various) posters not sending it signed/tracked?

Its basically a pre-requisite of using eBay as a seller these days.

For anything of value, PayPal only and PayPal verified addresses only!

Yeah, good point. We only save £5,000 a year by not doing that...

Then don't be surprised/angry when the great unwashed of this land take you for a ride.

To be honest, it's too much effort to be angry about it. It's just far more productive to get on with growing the business.

I've got to deal with missing items, etc. quite regularly but tracking every item that goes out isn't a solution to everything, is expensive in terms of time (although we've just got onto the DMO system which will make this a lot more efficient if we do want to do it) and doesn't provide a saving. In fact, as I've said, it would cost money. A lot of money.

More expensive items are sent via courier so are tracked by default.

[Vron]

I've had similar.

When I started selling on eBay I stupidly send items out as large letter only. I had 6 from 25 go missing in the first month. Everything now goes recorded - costs me an extra £1 per item - however some still go missing. You can tell from the emails who's using 'FreeBay' but as eBay is heavily geared towards the buyer you have to accommodate them. The new defect system is a joke - if a buyer opens an 'item not received' it's a defect on your account even if a replacement is sent or the buyer is refunded without quibbling.

Savvy eBay con artists know they can blackmail sellers with impunity. The report buyer button is useless. I had a woman try to blackmail me into sending her a higher priced item 'because her dog had been run over' so I should show compassion. I emailed back saying if she returned her item I would refund her money then she could buy the higher priced item from my shop. Cue the abuse. She didn't return the item (I offer free returns) and left me negative feedback. eBay removed her comments but not the negative so that's a defect on my account through no fault of my own.

[ModernAndy]

Vron said:

I've had similar.

The report buyer button is useless.

not entirely. I have been able to have somebody removed from eBay using it. The silly fker was obviously at it and even threatened to call the police if we didn't refund him! Paypal actually refunded him but didn't take the money out of our pocket.

[blindswelledrat]

It's only just clocked after all this time that people who refer to "the bay" mean "ebay". You actually lengthen the name?
Why?