Marking down stars for overcharged postage

xomggzyox

Hello! I purchased something on ebay that had £3.50 marked down for postage for first class, i was happy to pay this. The item arrived today and it was marked 2nd class and sent as a large letter just in a big thin paper envelope with £1.10 on the postage sticker. I'm not looking for a refund from the seller but would i be justified in sending a message to them telling them why i'll be marking their stars down?

starrybee

If you send them a message like that it could sound like feedback extortion and they could potentially get your feedback and star ratings removed.

I would certainly message them saying you are disappointed you paid for 1st class and received 2nd, but don't mention feedback or stars at all.

Crowqueen

For that amount, I would only mark down a few notches to 3 or 4 - I wouldn't leave a low as it's not an excessive overcharge (though I might comment on the lack of the use of the required service; I don't often notice tbh, it's one thing I don't keep track of).

I personally just leave mediocre stars and move on - it's the seller's lookout to keep their buyers happy, and a pound or two is not enough for me to waste my time looking for a refund - but if you want to message them feel free. I would do so if I left a low but I've rarely ever done that - it's a five-point scale for a reason, so if I'm just mildly disappointed with something I leave a 4 and hope the seller has the common sense to take notice of a flagging star that will not put them in too much jeopardy if they take action to keep their standards from slipping.

It is not feedback extortion to comment on something that the seller did wrong - in this case - but I don't think it's necessary in this case to mention FB if you message them anyway.

starrybee

Crowqueen wrote: »

It is not feedback extortion to comment on something that the seller did wrong - in this case - but I don't think it's necessary in this case to mention FB if you message them anyway.

There is another thread on here where the op said something similar to what the op here is suggesting (along the lines of "I'm not happy with the overcharge and now I'm going to leave you feedback saying so" and the seller has managed to get it removed due to extortion so it seems that ebay view it as such (or were just feeling grumpy that day!)

xomggzyox

She replied saying that a family member had posted the item for her so didnt realise and that she's going to refund me even though i stated i didn't want a refund... really nice of her. I marked down the postage to 4 though before she'd replied, i feel terrible now! Is there any way of amending it?

Crowqueen

No, unfortunately not. I don't think you should revise it, even if you could, tbh. If anything it has impressed on her the importance of not relying on other people when it is her account at stake. Sometimes lessons are learned by making mistakes, so if it is a mistake, she has nothing to worry about from being left a 4.

Look at it this way. I have recently done a law Masters (I've just finished my thesis). If I made a mistake on an essay I'd expect a harder score - in college one of my essays was marked down to a 60 (I was scoring 75-80 on other papers - those are high marks; 60 is a lower than average mark). I wouldn't expect a professor to give me a higher mark just because I said I made a mistake and admitted to not really answering the question as fully as the other papers I submitted - I'd just learn from what went wrong and move on, though certainly it was a disheartening and disappointing mark. I did well in the exam but I wish I'd done better in the paper, as I got a high 2:1 rather than a first as in all of my other classes.

A 4 won't hurt her. The averages (e.g. 4.9, 4.8 etc rather than 5.0 across the board) take into account people leaving 4s rather than 5s for some transactions, and P&P stars are routinely slightly lower than average anyway. I always allowed for 4.8s when I usually had 4.9s on other stars - I haven't sold enough in a while to have DSRs, but before that I accepted that P&P was often going to be rated slightly lower than the others - and worked around a slightly lower target to compensate. I now do inclusive first class postage, but am wondering whether I should go to 99p starts plus second class postage. Part of me feels I want to be more attractive - I have to sell something at £4 to get 50p back. But part of me doesn't want the lower potential ratings if I allow buyers to rate me. That's part of eBay - there's never a perfect solution, the only way to survive is to keep people happy, and I don't see anything too wrong with that.

eBay only restrict/ban people based on low ratiings (1 or 2). Flagging stars might get people's heads turning, or mean people are rated as 'below standard' - but it's only if they accumulate poor scores and violations they can get banned. There's a lot of misinformation about it but in truth the system is robust enough to withstand a few mistakes. If it was a routine problem then there would be consequences, which is fair enough because sellers can't really be expected to continue selling if they are upsetting too many customers - you wouldn't expect a shop to survive poor customer relations.

Perhaps it's a slightly naive view - given that I have never tried to sell as a business and don't have experience of nightmare customers - but I'm surprised at what sort of customer service people expect to get away with on eBay, given the rather harsh appraisals that are part and parcel of real life.