Sorry for such a delayed response; I've been very busy and the situation with this seller isn't fully resolved yet, but I WILL update when it's all said and done. For now, suffice it to say there have been interesting developments.
One thing, if I wasn't certain she was actually a new seller before, I am now, for a bunch of little reasons, but the gist is this: all the ways she's "lousy" are newbie failures, not the tactics of a scammer on their umpteenth account to keep scamming people. I know those do exist and I'm certain I've dealt with several, but this chick is definitely no scammer in newbie clothing. --If that WERE the case, LOL, it would almost have to be some kind of research project to see how many goofy oopsies buyers will put up with, if they believe the seller is new, NOT to make any real money, ha.
But I just wanted to reply to the main point (I think) you were making about what you do for your buyers, and the insights to be gleaned from buyers who are also sellers. I could have written 100% of what you said because I'm exactly the same way (even the part about not messing with UPS or FedEx because USPS is what I know, and I know it well; I would only add that UPS is consistently too expensive for what you get, and FedEx simply sucks in too many ways to go into here). Thing is, I have had so many jobs where the most disgusting coworker is the one who publicly pats themselves on the back for how they always give 110% (eyeroll) as a way to suck up to the boss and also psyche out everyone else, as if it's a competition and the goal is to demoralize others for only giving 109% or something, ha. But ebay is a whole other animal, because each time our phones make the 'sale' sound, the buyer that triggered it, THAT is our new boss, or one of multiple bosses, for the next X number of days (apparently as many as 130 days, as my last CC chargeback would indicate). So, here I don't see tooting your own horn about service to buyers as bragging or brown-nosing; I see it as sharing what WORKS, if you want to succeed at this.
A prime example was the winter 2020 'Ship-nado' crisis, where tons of sellers were having to issue tons of refunds for packages that weren't even permanently lost (just very slow), some putting their stores on vacation until January, some saying they were leaving ebay (of course), all because of problems that they had so much actual control over, if only they looked at it that way, instead of ignoring them and hoping they'd just resolve themselves, pretending they didn't need to treat buyers like people whose money they had, while the buyers had nothing, not watching their tracking on their behalf, not getting concerned if packages were stuck, not filing missing package cases with the carrier, not even writing to the buyer to give the slightest indication that "I haven't forgotten about you." My buyers seemed so shocked that I bothered to do that, and it was so EASY (just copy-pasting the same little message to each of them, one with more 'warmth' than a corporate-sounding form letter, you know what I mean). In other words, just a person communicating with another person, which in my opinion is what sets ebay apart, or it should anyway. I didn't have to issue one penny of refunds, in fact I had buyers feeling sorry for MY frustration to the point that they would write the moment their package finally arrived, to give ME the good news to celebrate (which I did!).
So, it's more saddening than angering when I buy from a seller who is so opposite of the give-a-hoot that I am, namely if they are a new seller, that I want them to do right not for me, but for themselves, for their OWN success! When I update the events ensuing after I started this post, I think you'll agree, this seller almost seems like a split personality or maybe someone with substance abuse issues, l guess the simple term is "flaky" ha. I don't think she's going to make it, unfortunately.
