Unfair Negative feedback - honestly makes me want to cry

highjewelgreen

I sell on Ebay and I have got to tell you as someone who cares about my business negative feedback is so upsetting. What really makes me cross is that a customer can leave negative feedback without contacting the me first and then Ebay will do very little for you other than say contact the buyer (which I always do). I have had a couple of negs, these read:

'I never received my item.' - I get proof of postage for all items and replace them before the 15 days Royal Mail want me to wait.

'I didn't like your product & now can not find way to msg the sellers'

I have tried to contact both buyers by Ebay message and email, Ebay suggest that I telephone them, the second one lives in Australia. I have asked a couple of people who seem to think that they shop online to avoid speaking to people. Would you be happy to receive a call from an Ebay seller?

I put a little card in my orders to say that if you are unhappy for any reason please contact me and let me put it right, is there anything else I should/or could do?

Any advice would be appreciated (and apologies for the rant).

campdave

If they didn't respond to your message, ask the ebay agent to speak to them on your behalf. I've done this on several occasions.

Look at the feedback they leave other sellers - if they seem to regularly leave non-positive feedback, ask the agent to have a look for patterns.

theonlywayisup

highjewelgreen wrote: »

'I never received my item.' - I get proof of postage for all items and replace them before the 15 days Royal Mail want me to wait.

Did you make contact with the buyer, if so how quickly. When an item doesn't arrive some buyers panic and think they have lost their money. It may have been a gift or item which was needed quickly. All you can do is find out what the issue was and try to address it. A simple replacement may not be relevant to the buyer.

highjewelgreen wrote: »

'I didn't like your product & now can not find way to msg the sellers'

This sounds like a newbie. Have you contacted them via messages and copied it to their email? If they reply via email you can send them a link to the message or copy and paste their reply in the response you send.

highjewelgreen

campdave wrote: »

If they didn't respond to your message, ask the ebay agent to speak to them on your behalf. I've done this on several occasions.

Look at the feedback they leave other sellers - if they seem to regularly leave non-positive feedback, ask the agent to have a look for patterns.

Thanks I didn't realise Ebay would, they seem to just fob me off with telling me to telephone them before they will do anything.

Avoriaz

Stop worrying about the occasional negative, You can't please everyone.

Just leave an unemotional factual response and forget about it.

A few negatives amongst a sea of positives doesn't put me off buying and won't put the vast majority off either.

I've bought from sellers with a hundred+ negatives as they were balanced by 50,000 positives.

theonlywayisup

It's not the negative that hurts, it's the associated low DSR's. Op have you checked your dashboard?

highjewelgreen

theonlywayisup wrote: »

Did you make contact with the buyer, if so how quickly. When an item doesn't arrive some buyers panic and think they have lost their money. It may have been a gift or item which was needed quickly. All you can do is find out what the issue was and try to address it. A simple replacement may not be relevant to the buyer.



This sounds like a newbie. Have you contacted them via messages and copied it to their email? If they reply via email you can send them a link to the message or copy and paste their reply in the response you send.

Thanks for the reply. I contacted the first buyer as soon as I received the feedback (which is the first I knew about them not receiving the item) but had no response from either their email address or ebay messaging.

The second one is a newbie, they have feedback of 36 and have only ever left one piece of feedback - the negative one they left for me. I have emailed them and messaged them but to be perfectly honest this one was only this morning so there is time for a reply, although I am not holding out much hope.

highjewelgreen

Avoriaz wrote: »

Stop worrying about the occasional negative, You can't please everyone.

Just leave an unemotional factual response and forget about it.

A few negatives amongst a sea of positives doesn't put me off buying and won't put the vast majority off either.

I've bought from sellers with a hundred+ negatives as they were balanced by 50,000 positives.

Thank you, I know it is irrational and I do have 99.9% positive, I guess you just judge things by your own standards. I would never leave negative feedback before contacting the seller.

highjewelgreen

theonlywayisup wrote: »

It's not the negative that hurts, it's the associated low DSR's. Op have you checked your dashboard?

Thank you for your response. Yes they are fine, two 5.0's and two 4.9s.

theonlywayisup

highjewelgreen wrote: »

Thank you for your response. Yes they are fine, two 5.0's and two 4.9s.

The feedback from this morning won't have updated yet, as it's 20th, then it may not show for a couple of days as the monthly adjustments are made. Check it again after the weekend.

Mulder00

I prefer online rating systems to reflect actual experiences with buying and selling rather than being what the seller wants to hear.

About two years ago I ordered takeaways online and I rated the establishment on their service and food. It is not very often that I have to throw food away, but in this case the food was completely overloaded with sugar and I stated this in my review (together with good marks for delivery etc). The next day the owner of the takeaway phoned and screamed at me and asked me how dare I complain about his restaurant before contacting him and demanded that I contact the website to remove my feedback.

At the time I was so flabbergasted that I actually arranged to have my feedback removed, but I really wish I hadn't. Feedback systems are there to give other potential buyers an view of what to expect.

Then earlier this year, I ordered something via Amazon and the item was marked dispatched. 17 days later I get a refund saying "shipping address is undeliverable". I left a review for the seller stating exactly that, I waited 17 days and the order was cancelled. Nothing malicious. Two weeks later I got a message saying that the seller had personal problems and she would send me the items for free if I remove my feedback (total value was £64). I decided not to take this up as I believe that honest feedback is worth much more than that.

Given my experiences thus far, I am MUCH more wary now of sellers with perfect feedback than those with less than perfect scores. The last thing I want is for someone unable to contain their emotions when things go wrong and I state that and ruin their perfect score.