HORRIBLE customer story...

Agghhhh I hate buyers like that. I've just finished with a particularly nasty episode myself in which a buyer got pissed off and had a friend bid on my auctions and leave negs! Luckily Powerseller Support helped me out because I was able to provide evidence.

I only use USPS for international orders and tell the buyer that the package is out of my control. I will guarantee nada.

For US customers, I force the to use UPS. The few extra dollars added to the tab give the person a real tracking number and insurance is free for shipments under a $100.

As a general rule, I have just accepted that I will have a smalll percentage of crazy people. I have one that paid for an item five days late and then filed a claim on day seven. She thought I was supposed to ship as soon as she bought...not when she paid.

try adding an extra pound to the wieght of the listing and then use the extra to send priority instead of parcel post. customers are VERY happy when the item arrives so quickly. usps tends to take better care of priority packages. good luck with mister nasty

quote:

Originally posted by cavaleriesoldaat:

quote:

I paid you on the 8th and have not received the harddrive I'm
very unhappy and will file a case with PayPal tomorrow if the
item does not arrive by then.

I received this today.....wow, was I furious. I have perfect feedback, and I ALWAYS ship within 1 business day, and I ALWAYS provide an email with a tracking number.............(grinding teeth)..........the thing is, the guy choose USPS Parcel Post, which, according to USPS, takes 2-9 days. Today would be the 7th day...while that is unusually slow, it is still within the alloted time.

I guess this just ticked me off since, of course, I've had orders disapear, and I've had orders damaged, but I go the extra mile to advertise for customers to email or call me with questions or concerns, and in the past, they always have...this guy just sends me this...I immediately checked his feedback....and to my surprise, has 201 perfect feedbacks!! How does someone get that far in eBay, and send an email like that? I'm in awe.

Lovely end to the day.

I'll send someone over to take care of the "situation." Guido has always gotten me pretty good results. <wink>

It just chomps my butt when they moan and groan over something that the seller has no control over. (like my gripe this past 9 days is all the emails I'm receiving from AOL that states the delivery of my email to their customers are delayed and will be delivered later <blech> What gripes me is when the customer is unprofessional. It will never get a person anywhere but off on the wrong foot to send accusatory emails, instead of worded intelligently and calmly.

I guess it's just as I was raised..I definitely win more battles with honey than vinegar.

Someone could get that far with eBay by bidding on items that they feel they can "bully" sellers by intimidation.

Pull their contact information and give them a call. I pull contact information at the drop of a hat..doesn't phase me to call them in the least bit. I've found that 99% of my angry customers aren't all that bad arse when I'm on the phone with them. They calm down real fast because it's a much more personal type of contact. It's when they hide behind the text that they feel they are intimidating.

Best of luck and sorry it happened to you.
Donna

quote:

Originally posted by Peach:
Agghhhh I hate buyers like that. I've just finished with a particularly nasty episode myself in which a buyer got pissed off and had a friend bid on my auctions and leave negs! Luckily Powerseller Support helped me out because I was able to provide evidence.

Yep...eBay will deal with this. Thanks to IP addresses they can easily figure this out. What happened to me was over an almost 10 week span and was a horrible experience.

Thanks to Sellathon too as they were a HUGE factor in me getting the information to eBay faster. Even though eBay had the information..I could keep track of the information on my end and see IP addresses/cities/states and more that were viewing my auctions.

Anyway...long story short...

I ticked off a bidder last year in China by filing NPB. He became NARU'd. He then decided to open another eBay account (same IP/computer address) and bid on tons of my stuff and leave immediate negative feedback. (one of the great things about the new policy for newbies bidding & leaving negs is the delay of ability to leave feedback immediately) EBAY traced the user by the IP addresses...zapped their account. This happened again. Same dance. He then began signing up on other computers (thus the IP numbers were close but didn't match) I blocked all bids from Asia.

You think that wasn't bad enough? On my emails back during the summer I had in my sig...all of my eBay ID links. Sweet...he could ruin all of them in one fell swoop! Needless to say I don't have links to all of my IDs anywhere on any email signature.

I digress....

Customer then signed up on various countries eBay sites...france, switzerland, netherlands, australia, united kingdom, etc etc and began buying like crazy and leaving negative again. Once again, I could see the IP/countries/etc from Sellathon reports and forward them over to eBay. Block, Block, Block country.

Then he hit the United States eBay registration. This was six weeks since the NPB had been filed. He then began recruiting others via a message board that was worldwide to bid on my items and leave negatives just like he had done.

We're eight weeks since the first NPB notice. I'm a basket case as my little "hobby" with eBay as some have referred to it as, is needed income for this household and enables me to be home with my daughter and have the lifestyle where I can volunteer and such.

I digress again...

Same thing over and over again in the US false bidding. I'm a daily caller to eBay and eBay stores and they're used to me calling. Their only advice was to close my stores, tuck tail and open a new ID. I'm a very strong woman but more than one morning ebay heard heard my tearful pleas to please help me and to allow me the seller to begin blocking IP addresses on my own.

I was given a solution by a fellow seller that finally worked....I changed all of my auctions to immediate payment required, less than 20 positive feedback and no duplicate bids were allowed on any of my auctions plus they had to be US sales only. This finally stopped them but at a such loss a loss of income on my part, stress and well, admit it fella's would you have wanted to be living with me? <smile>

I lost so much money from sales. eBay took their time sweet time refunding fee's and reversing negs and so much more..plus I had to go through the npb, fvf and more filing for each and every item. I said..you know in my case their bogus, just do them all for me...please? Nope..they didn't.

Is this the end? Nope! Just remember this is the short version..not the long version.

I can't even begin to tell you, this ticked the off buyer majorly off! We're into the 10th week since the first NPB. Originally I pulled this persons contact information and tried to call him in China. So when you pull contact info, they receive yours, too...Can you imagine what came next? That's right...phone calls.

Constant phone calls..during the night, during the day...and with much laughter with dialect I couldn't understand. Thank goodness for caller ID and a buddy down at the police station. The calls eventually stopped but it was nerve-wracking to say the least!

Had I not had the information readily available to me from Sellathon it would have been so much worse. EBAY has this information available to them and I didn't feel it was my job to get them the information from subscription to Sellathon and hand it over to them to speed up the process of blocking. But I did and glad I had the information, too.

What happened to you happens often, it really does. There are horror reports just like yours reported all the time. I wish they made it easier for just regular folks to get help when this happens. Luckily being powersellers this helped both you and I to have more immediate access to phone numbers and such..but can you imagine the frustration of a small fish in the big ocean of eBay?

I still wish we as sellers could block IP numbers..I send that suggestion in monthly to eBay. One day they'll get tired of me or invite me for a seller symposium, ya think?

My Best and I'm so glad you caught that creep!
Donna

Wow Donna! That is incredible. I never knew it got that bad. Thanks for posting that.

Donna, that is one crazy story!

But back to the original post...

I only offer one domestic shipping option: USPS Priority. Then I say that I am happy to provide other shipping options at the customer's request. Hardly anyone asks for cheaper shipping. And, there is the added bonus of free boxes and free carrier pickup.

I've toyed with the idea, but maybe 1 out of 10 select Priority, and my main focus is to keep my shipping real low, this has been my biggest advantage when competing with the HUGE sellers who have better suppliers, or more buying power.

Frustrating none-the-less.

As for Donna's story....speachless? Yeah, that's the word.

Somebody has it out for me...I sware.
I just got an email from a Canadien Buyer who said there package hasn't arrived (17 days later). My standard shipping to Canada is USPS Airmail which is 4-10 days.

At least this guy was civil about it...so far...

Honestly I have had parcel post take nearly a month from east to west coast!jan 26 to feb 17th It is not worth the B**** hassel of being cheap or buyers nasty emails ( as if i would run away with their for $20)I now decided to put priority and leave it be

Personally I won't offer Parcel Post for this very reason. I only send $100 or less via Priority Mail, everything over $100 goes UPS with a tracking and insured. The credit card company loves tracking numbers when it comes to a chargeback, UPS is excellent with their tracking/signature. I'd rather pay more for a piece of mind.

The customer ended up somewhat satisfied...didn't leave bad feedback.

I ship a LOT with Parcel Post, and generally, anywhere in the US, it arrives in 3-5 days. This was a rarity. Often, in order to make an add stand out, I have to offer shipping options that are much lower. I.E., my product cost is the same, or just a little cheaper, or a little more expensive, but by offering Parcel Post, I've got a shipping option that is anywhere from $10-$20 cheaper than my competitors. It works, too. My stuff will outsell them.

Of course, there is the risk we've been talking about. At my current volume...and still perfect feedback, I'll stick with this...for now.

quote:

Originally posted by Suthrnjewl:
What happened to me was over an almost 10 week span and was a horrible experience.

This is my first ever post here. I've been lurking, but after reading Donna's post--Whew! I hate crazy customers as well... Donna, tho, what a nightmare! Glad it's over for you. Thanks for posting the story. It really lets us all know that we're not alone.

At Christmas, I sold 2 sterling silver charms to a woman who wrote several threating letters to me, claiming the charms were not sterling. (They are, of course.) I wrote back mentioning that she was covered by the money-back guarantee, and to return the items for a full refund. More hate-mail. She claims that she took the charms to a jeweler who told her that not only were the charms not sterling, he could not tell what kind of metal they were. Again, I wrote and told her I would gladly refund her money if she was unhappy. She wrote back that she would be reporting me to eBay, etc.....
Fortunately, never heard back from her. But the experience left me very upset.

I also got my first 2 negs just around this time.

I lost my dad 6 weeks earlier. He died right here in my home after a long illness. He and I were very close. In the family, they say I'm his clone.

After Dad's death, I had some trouble getting my act together and my ebaying suffered. Two people bought items and negged me due to length of time in shipping the products. Both negged me within 48 hours of each other. My first ever negs in over 1,000 FB. I was really, really, really bumming about it. Maybe it's dumb to worry about it, but I work SOOOO hard with my customers to ensure that they are happy.

Anyway, the first customer received her product, only a few days later than expected and after we emailed back and forth, she withdrew the neg.

On the second person, the package went missing. Great timing, huh? Wrote and told her I would send her a second package, with a bonus (another charm) for her trouble. She shortly negged me after that email. When her package arrived, she returned it to me unopened. I wrote again -- I would have called had I had her number -- but she did not want to hear about the package.

Ok, the first person's a crazy lady. The last person bothered me more, tho, because she was so nice to deal with in her emails, and I think of her every time I see that neg in my feedback.

There are always going to be people like that, don't let it eat you up. I go the extra mile to satisfy my customers, and truthfully, I let some get away with crap I probably shouldn't, all for the sake of feedback. As time marches on, and feedbacks build-up, I'll start to enforce my policies more strictly.


UPDATE: To add to my original story, I ended-up, after all the bs, satisfying the customer. They got their' package, and after many emails, I convinced the buyer that I was not responsible for USPS delivering late. He finally left me GOOD feedback in the end.

Happy ending to one bad customer story, anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by cavaleriesoldaat:
There are always going to be people like that, don't let it eat you up. I go the extra mile to satisfy my customers, and truthfully, I let some get away with crap I probably shouldn't, all for the sake of feedback. As time marches on, and feedbacks build-up, I'll start to enforce my policies more strictly.


UPDATE: To add to my original story, I ended-up, after all the bs, satisfying the customer. They got their' package, and after many emails, I convinced the buyer that I was not responsible for USPS delivering late. He finally left me GOOD feedback in the end.

Happy ending to one bad customer story, anyway.

Excellent to hear!