12-17-2020 08:25 AM
After reading this, please comment below and tell me if you feel I'm wrong in this instance. I thought I was 100 percent in the right but was told otherwise.
You know the frustrating thing for me personally is. We get all these notices from ebay with updates about how they're going to do this and that to protect sellers etc. Sometimes it's meaningful changes and sometimes not but never the less at least they acknowledge the issue albeit usually WAY later than they should've. I've frequently done my best to help people here on these boards and tried to keep people positive about the future of ebay, managed payments, new buyers coming in etc, sometimes going so far as to defend ebay and their decisions if I felt that it from an unbiased point of view, their policy made sense. The last couple of months or more have been extremely trying for many people and frustration has been shown on the board regularly with ebays policies. I've always tried to be optimistic and see it from ebays point as well as the buyer or seller. I'm having a hard time grasping the current situation I've gotten into and the more I think about it the more frustrating it becomes. I am now to the point of asking myself, even though there's money to be made here. Is it worth also aiding someone make money who consistantly makes it tougher and IS NOT PROTECTING ME DURING THE HOLIDAYS! Do you hear that Mr. Sweetnam, Mr. Lannone!
Here's the situation and where my frustration comes from.
Buyer purchases item December 4th. I have 1 day handling time and economy postage on the listing.
Knowing we have major delays in USPS and Fedex. I ship it the same day and use PRIORITY mail! Buyer sends message 3 days after purchase complaining that package has not arrived yet and tracking shows it in a distribution center somewhere. I send a long message and explain the situation and am very apologetic (even though I've already upgraded shipping at my cost in an effort to combat late shipments). 8 days after I ship, the package arrives. Buyer leaves neutral feedback stating "took a long time and his client was upset". I'm a bit frustrated by this point thinking "Wow, 8 days seems pretty timely given the mess we're in". Anyway I proceed on thinking this won't be a big deal. Ebay will review it. See that I shipped earlier than scheduled and used an upgraded service, they'll see the message I sent in reply to his frustration and realize how conciliatory my message was and realize I did everything I could to try and comfort the buyer. So I request feedback removal.
No problem right? I mean after all, we've got your back says ebay. The joke was on me. The rep proceeded to tell me that it was not a removable feedback. On what planet is that not removable? I'm not the one who gave the unsuspecting buyer a completely unrealistic "expected delivery" date. EBAY puts the false hope out there and the sellers get to suffer the consequences.
Now I know this is not a huge deal to most people and they'd go. "Oh well, it's 1 neutral, cry me a river!" To me a neutral or negative is taken to heart and I take it VERY seriously. I don't care if you're a small hobby seller or run a multi million dollar a year sales account on ebay. When an issue such as this comes up am I wrong to think ebay should've protected my account and removed that neutral?
Solved! Go to Best Answer
12-17-2020 11:16 AM
I've had three customers contact me this week (so far!) from three different parts of the country, because their items haven't shown up yet. Yes, they are very late, even though I shipped them same day or next morning. I do what you do, i.e., type a sympathetic reply explaining that the post office is up against the intersection of Covid and Christmas, express my confidence that their item will arrive eventually, and requst that they give it a few more days. There is not much else that most sellers can do.
In my case, I can and do offer a replacement item, or to refund their payment, if their item ultimately fails to show up. It's small money, so my loss would be minimal. Still, my "profit" on that transaction will go into negative numbers simply because USPS is failing in their execution. I do realize that we're living in a unique situation, and am not necessarily faulting USPS, but this would be a good time for Ebay to step up and show a little extra support for their sellers. Removing a "negative" or"neutral" feedback for this particular situation shouldn't cost them anything, save for the five or ten minutes that it would take a CSR to do it. And a well-designed online request system could minimize that.
I've not received any feedback yet from these three transactions, though I expect that they won't all be positive. A "negative" or "neutral" that I didn't earn won't be fair to me, and unltimately will reflect poorly on Ebay's seller pool as a whole. Addressing unearned bad feedback would be a low-cost way for Ebay to protect their reputation as a safe place to buy on the web.
02-22-2021 11:31 AM
Same thing happened to me. I shipped same day of purchase. Literally within an hour. Buyer left NEGATIVE as it took USPS 12 days to deliver said item. Ebay refused to remove the feedback.
Feedback is a way to let our members share their experiences with other members. Feedback that breaches the feedback policy may be removed by eBay. We won't remove feedback on the grounds that a seller believes a comment is untrue or undeserved.
Super frustrating as it brought my feedback rating down very low. 😞 I also requested feedback removal directly from the buyer after I had explained to her how it was "out of my hands". She didn't care and replied with the feedback still applied.
😫