It’s surprisingly easy to kill your eBay business,
if you’re not careful – sure, you can start over
from scratch without it costing you anything, but
do you really want to? Still, if you want your
business to end up dead in the water, here are
some simple ways to do it.
I absolutely can’t emphasise enough the importance
of really believing that the customer is always
right. But trying to make excuses for complaints
isn’t the only thing you need to avoid. There are
a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you
don’t want to kill your business before it’s even
started properly – and I’ll show you in the next
email what they are.
You might think that refunding one customer’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week’s profit. It’s far better to look at it this way: if you don’t give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week’s profit, but you’ll probably lose a few weeks’ profit after that too. Now which option looks better?
Are you still not convinced? Think this would only
work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher
the price of the items you sell, the more your
reputation is worth to you. Let’s say you were
selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for
example, and making a $1,000 profit per week
overall.
You should always handle customers’ complaints
before they complain to eBay – in fact, you should
email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any.
Going through the dispute process is time
consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright
unnecessary.
Offering a refund will make almost any problem go
away, and it really will cost you less in the
long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback
will stay with you forever, while having a 100%
positive rating is like owning a bar of solid
gold.
They say the item doesn’t match the description:
Resist the urge to email back with “yes it does,
you just didn’t read the description properly”.
Take the item back for a refund, and edit your
description if you need to, to make any confusing
points extra clear.
The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.
They say the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn’t arrived. If it still hasn’t arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. No, I don’t care what that costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?
But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer. Here are a few common situations and how to handle them.