or there was some ridiculous delay in refunding. or communicating the problem, which there wasn’t.
You’re correct. It’s really not a huge deal, I’m just venting 
Buyers should be aware that a a lot of ebay sellers are not stores with the same guidelines, but even private individuals need to use common sense consideration.
That seller was a flake.
The buyer I’m complaining about had one negative feedback as a seller for waiting over a week to ship with no communication to the buyer at all. Then he tried to defend that with"yeah the buyer never contacted me"
They gave you thier money dickwad, no other communication from them is nessecary. Ship the item and let them know it’s on it’s way, or at least email them explaining and apologizing for any unavoidable delay.
That last line made me laugh. Obviously the people involved on their end aren’t communicating with each other. very well.
Some years ago I bounght an inexpensive tem on ebay. Most of the cost was tucked into the shipping and hnadling, which they are reluctant to refund and don’t get charged fees for.
They sent me the wrong item. I complained and they said send it back and we’ll refund your money. I told them I should be required to pay anything for thier mistake and they should pay postage. I made the mistake of trying to resolve it by buying the correct item again from them since it wasn’t a huge dollar amount.
They again sent me the wrong item. I complained again and they still refused to send the correct item even though it was under ten dollars, and refused to pay for postage on the return. “The listing says buyer pays return postage”
So, with a little investigation I find out they are based in my city, so I collect my paperwork and drive over, hoping being there in person will resolve the shipping issue. Nobody would even talk to me about the ebay business.
“It’s totally seperate and there’s nobody here to help you”
I left them two negative feedbacks and they left two for me.
Now, running this business I think they were even bigger jerks than I thought back then.
Yep, on my personal account I had a buyer from Canada. I shipped his items and he had assumed something about the items without asking any questions. He complained that it took too long to get and he had to pay customs fees, as if I’m resposnbsible for the mail. We eventually reached a solution where I agreed to refund his purchase price only and he was responsible for shipping.
We’ve decided not to do any shipping overseas because we’ve had issues before. Now people have to have someone in the US be thier contact if they want an item.
I would have left negative feedback for you as well in the first example you gave. You should know how many items you have in stock before you list them. I’d be pissed if I bought something and was expecting it and then you turn around and say you can’t have it.
Are you for real? I’ve had stock issues with big internet retailers, but god forbid it happen once with a small business run by one guy.:rolleyes:
Yes I am for real. Lets say I’ve spent a good hour or more searching for the item, watching it bidding on it etc. I win it and I pay for it. Then I get an email saying…sorry but we don’t actually have the item you just paid us for…nice.
Big waste of my time and energy.
Well. the big part is in question.
Businesses big and small owned and operated by humans make mistakes. It’s a fact of life that grownups ought to understand.
Companies that make excellent products have a certain small % that fail right out of the box. If you happen to be the one that gets one that fails, it’s unfortunate but it doesn’t mean they suck as a company. What matters is how they handle these inevitable problems. Although it doesn’t feel good when it happens to you , the idea that if you’re good at what you do you never make mistakes , and customers will never be disappointed and inconvenienced is a bogus one.
I assume you make a mistake occasionally. How do you prefer others react to your mistakes?
I just realized that the OP looks like I’m pitting the first oerson who left negative feedback over the inventory issue. That was not my intention. That’s a jusdgement call I don’t agree with but not being a jackass. It is only the 2nd person who runs thier own ebay and online business that I was pitting and venting about.
I don’t make mistakes 
If I am selling something I would double check that I actually had the item in stock before listing it.
I had a buyer who left negative feedback the day after she made payment. She said she didn’t receive the item. I think she expected the item to be teleported into her living room within hours of making payment. :rolleyes:
Ugh, eBay. I’m almost done with my drama and glad it’s over. Here are my war stories:
End of February, I decided to get rid of a lot of my songbook (sheetmusic) collection. It’s taking up space and while I love a lot of 'em, I never play them anymore, so it’s more showcase than anything. So, about 400 books go up on ebay over the course of 5 days. I offered bundle shipping via media mail to the US only (that way I don’t have to guess on what things cost and have a little more control over it all). I then wait until people pay before shipping out items as some are buying over the course of several days to save shipping, I’m completely cool with that.
My Ebay nightmares:
Problem 1) Person in Dubai wins an auction even though it’s US shipping only. She DEMANDS I still sell it to her. She wasn’t the first, I had someone from France do it the day before but she offered to pay $25 for shipping. So that’s the same offer I give to the person in Dubai. She refuses and leaves negative feedback without paying. Ebay hasn’t refunded me the amount to list it or go after her for bidding on a book she couldn’t buy to begin with. Grr.
Problem 2) A book I listed in fair condition as it was a bit banged up arrived and one of the pages was loose and there were pictures and everything. The book cost $2.25. My policy was to take anything back for a week if the buyer wasn’t happy, they just had to pay for shipping. I offered to refund the buyer the money but he said it would cost more to ship it back to me. He then left negative feedback.
Problem 3) This is the worst one of them all. So every day I would head to the post office for 8 days straight (we have a PO that’s open on Sundays). I used the same packaging all 8 days for the books. On one day and only one day I shipped books, packages had disappeared from the mail. One person eventually got a package with the wrong books in it. I assumed I screwed up and put the wrong label on the box and apologized profusely. Turns out that he got books that belonged to 3 different buyers. WTF, I must have really screwed up. Nope, turns out the USPS did. I figured this part out when he sent me back the books. The package I sent to him was a little over 14lbs. The package of books he received was 27 lbs, damaged, and put into a new box. I’ve sent requests to the mail recovery center (dead letter office) but haven’t got anything back yet. So, I’m out a little over $700 because of the post office’s mess up (and mine for not getting insurance. Ebay sided on the side of the buyer for all of 'em). But during that whole time while trying to sort this out, two of the 4 buyers? Complete aholes. The accusations that I did this on purpose pushed me nearly to the edge of telling them to fk right off.
I’ll probably still buy stuff off of Ebay, but they definitely lost a seller. I don’t have the patience or customer service skills to do that again.
But here’s the thing, that’s exactly what the feedback should reflect. A good company should have a high positive feedback; worse companies will be lower. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of the customer to try to make judgments about how you do as a company overall. All the customer can do is make an assessment of their personal experience and whether it was good or not.
For instance, I’m at a restaurant, I could have the best waiter in the world even understanding that he’s human and makes mistakes, but if I happen to be the one person he food and drinks all over, of course I’m going to be upset. What makes him a good waiter isn’t that he never makes mistakes, but that he makes very few of them, so the few mistakes are far outweighed by the generally great service he provides.
That’s what makes the eBay system bad, because if everyone makes allowances for that sort of stuff, it could actually be a more systemic problem but no one notices because no one leaves negative feedback and it makes it useless for actually evaluating the quality of a business.
So in the case of the first, IMO, the negative feedback was absolutely deserved. It was a negative experience that he entered into a business transaction and left worse off for it because of wasted time. Yes, it should acknowledge also that you did the best you could to correct for it, but what makes it clear that it’s a rare mistake is that that sort of negative response is non-existant other than that.
The second guy though, yeah, I do believe that the negative feedback is probably premature because things do get damaged in transit through no fault of your own.
Years ago, I read a poster on the wall of a business, something to the effect of: “To the customer that got the defective unit, your defect rate is 100%.” The point being that no matter how good your defect rate, you should strive for “Zero Defects”, because the only thing your customer has to go by is his own experience of your performance.
He doesn’t (and can’t) know about the thousands of perfectly functioning units you’ve shipped. He only knows about the bad one that he received. A negative is not only understandable, but is also only what you deserve. That’s why you bent over backward (as detailed in the rest of your post) to make it “righter than right”. To try to overcome the negative impression you already gave the customer.
That said, the first neg in your OP was legitimately deserved. The second, posted before anyone could reasonably get a chance to address it, was just plain assholishness. You mentioned that the “customer” was running his own business in the same field, possibly in competition. What chance that it was an attempt to game the rules in order to undercut your “perfect” defect rate, and gain himself more business?
Have you considered not advertising for sale merchandise you do not have and not shipping defective merchandise?
“You’d think anyone would realize that occasionaly things are damaged in shipping, and it being DOA, is not out fault.” = “Gosharoo, seller, why do you think this should be my problem? Just 'cause I sold you the piece of junk?”
This is business, not patty-cake. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you want to take their money, be prepared to deliver on your promises. If you want to make friends, go join a bridge club.
Stop being an asshole. He was never given the opportunity to remedy the problem.
When you charging money, there shouldn’t be problems. Self-pitying sellers are the last people I want to do business with.
The customer had a negative experience: he got defective merchandise from an internet seller. If I were selling things on the internet, I’d keep in mind that defective merchandise scams are one of the chief reasons people avoid buying online. And I’d make sure that I took that into account when servicing customers.
I certainly would never dream of adopting the attitude of “Well, sheeee-yit, looks like our shipper done fucked up. Ain’t our fault, bro.”
There’s always an excuse: Simple inventory error. Careless handling by the shipper. These don’t say “power seller” to me (particularly if you’re only doing dozens of sales a week). And I’m glad it doesn’t to eBay either.
Dude, shit happens. The seller wasn’t even given a chance to rectify the problem. Nothing about the OP says he has an attitude of “Well, sheeee-yit, looks like our shipper done fucked up. Ain’t our fault, bro.” Where the fuck are you getting that?
Here are some quotes from the OP
Dissatisfied customer? Well, that’s just life. Seller disappointed and inconvenience by negative feedback? Well, then the buyer is obviously an impatient, judgmental shithead.
Yeah, it might look like a store if you consider it from the point of view of “You post an auction. I win, I pay, you ship.” But it’s not like a store with the same guidelines: You win, you pay, and when I get the chance, hopefully I’ll have the item in stock and it will be working when you get it.
In response to this, At best an inventory mistake deserves a neutral rating, you don’t deserve a pat on the back for issuing a refund on a transaction you were unable to complete. Is it only negative if the seller says “sorry, I ran out of inventory, oh and I’m keeping your money”? … the OP thinks an “inventory error” should result in negative feedback only if it degrades to this extent:
I’ve gotta tell you: I see a lot of the “why it’s everybody’s else fault” line of thinking and not very much of “How can we ensure that we don’t auction off merchandise we don’t have and make sure our merchandise works when it gets to our buyers?”