Would you block a repeat buyer for this?

[thefossildepot]

Have this repeat buyer who’s been buying from me for a couple years. Usually around 2 or sometimes 3 items a week most months. Higher priced items around $50-200. Yesterday he decided to open a return on pretty much half of the items he purchased within the last two months with the message “don’t want it” on every return. 9 returns all at once. Which is going to be a fairly large blow to my business. Some of these items were purchased nearly 60 days ago, some around a month ago, some just last week. Hard to believe he would wait 1 or 2 months to return items he didn’t like if that was really the case. Kinda seems like he probably found something else he wants to buy and figured out he could take advantage of free returns to get the funds. I have free returns enabled for better search placement. And I know getting rid of free returns would encourage false INAD. So nothing that can really be done there. I’ve made a lot selling to this guy. But not sure if the risk this buyer now poses is worth keeping this buyer. Would you block this guy? 

[iamalwaysright]

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@thefossildepot wrote:

Have this repeat buyer who’s been buying from me for a couple years. Usually around 2 or sometimes 3 items a week most months. Higher priced items around $50-200. Yesterday he decided to open a return on pretty much half of the items he purchased within the last two months with the message “don’t want it” on every return. 9 returns all at once. Which is going to be a fairly large blow to my business. Some of these items were purchased nearly 60 days ago, some around a month ago, some just last week. Hard to believe he would wait 1 or 2 months to return items he didn’t like if that was really the case. Kinda seems like he probably found something else he wants to buy and figured out he could take advantage of free returns to get the funds. I have free returns enabled for better search placement. And I know getting rid of free returns would encourage false INAD. So nothing that can really be done there. I’ve made a lot selling to this guy. But not sure if the risk this buyer now poses is worth keeping this buyer. Would you block this guy? 

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I didn't read any of the replies in the last four pages yet. But my gut reaction is

1) Your free returns policy is for 60 days?, Does it even give significantly more exposure than a 30 day free returns policy? If not, move that up to 30 days. If you DO have 30 days and the buyer is just filing the 30+ day returns, I would just ignore those as it's beyond the buyer's MBG and they can't force you to accept those.

2) It might be worth contacting your buyer aside from these returns and seeing what's up. Depends on your relationship with the buyer. Have you guys traded messages before? If so, how is the rapport between you guys? If it's enough for you to ask a question to them to see what's up, by all means do that. If it's not, it's a judgement call. But I'd still do it as a "customer service courtesy" for them. Maybe you can resolve something for them. 

3) "But not sure if the risk this buyer now poses is worth keeping this buyer. Would you block this guy? " That's something you need to calculate for yourself. Consider your total revenue, the revenue this buyer brought in, the amount he is returning, time/money lost from processing these returns. I personally wouldn't block him AT LEAST until I see if I can get from more details from him by messaging. This will obviously have to be done alongside processing the returns. But I would only communicate within the messages and not in the return details consoles just for convenience sake.

PS. I've personally blocked a few long time repeat buyers. One I can recall is a buyer who oftentimes about every 1.5-2 months, made bulk orders totaling around 1-1.5k. I think I blocked him after like his 8th order from me, he started claiming a lot of dumb stuff and barking orders demanding special treatment telling me how much money he has and how much he can easily buyer from my competitors. I blocked him after that arrogance. He later tried to buy from me with another account. No dice.

[iamalwaysright]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

If I block in a situation like this with a repeat buyer, I message them telling them that they have excessive returns  and that we are blocking for a certain time period and then ask them to ask us more questions BEFORE they buy again. Then we can unblock.

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This is still currently not possible on ebay right? @wastingtime101 

The ebay glitch about how when you block a buyer they are still able to message you, but that message goes into limbo and the seller never receives it. This even happens if you check the box that says something like "allow blocked buyers to message me."

Did ebay ever fix that yet?

[iamalwaysright]

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@12345jamesstamps wrote:

I would do as all separate returns so he has to mail each item days apart. Do not mail returns everything together.

Make the guy work to return them separately. The ones longer than 30 days for a return he needs to pay for shipping. Items open on a claim should be returned first...if not bought together...do not mail them together.

Make the buyer work to return items.

I wouldn't block buyer....that could get you negative feedback if he didn't do feedback and then decides to.

Buyer hate to have to reship items.

Items longer than 30 days MBG...maybe ask what's wrong and perhaps a partial refund. might work.

But don't get all worked all about it. Good luck.

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Why would the buyer have to mail the items days apart? From what I can tell in the OP, the buyer filed all these separate returns at the same time, so the clock to accept them started at the same time too. And if it's auto-accepted then they all have the "ship item by" date as the same. But at the very least all of the buyer's ebay returns should be within a 4 day window.

And I'm not 100% certain but I think the buyer is allowed to send all items back together in one package and provide their own tracking number if they want. I believe all the returns can have the same tracking number as well.

[iamalwaysright]

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@gurlcat wrote:

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But what .........
.......on god's green Earth......
......could be more stable than ............ FOSSILS????  
🤣
  

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It's the wrong size. I normally wear a Large and the fossil is more like a Medium?? 😁

[iamalwaysright]

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@thefossildepot wrote:

Only communication I’ve received from the buyer aside from the returns was the buyer asking how to find the return labels. Certainly frustrating. But I suppose some people forget most eBay sellers are individuals and not some big corporation. Added up everything the buyers purchased in the last couple years and this probably only accounts for 5% of his purchases. So will give the buyer another chance. But will certainly look at this buyers offers with more scrutiny given the increased risk. One more “changed mind” return from him anytime soon and the buyers going on the block list. 

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Oh okay then. I would agree and keep him on board with a close eye as you said. But if you choose to not do it this time around, for me on the next return I'll see if I can message send more communication messages to the buyer. I still wouldn't be convinced to block a buyer that returns 5% of this purchases. If you strictly look at it as a percentage numbers thing and not a volume count of returns, it's fine. Because I'll bet many buyers return 100% of their purchases before being blocked by sellers... because they'd have only bought and returned 1 item. Good luck.

[iamalwaysright]

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@tammiegoldenhair wrote:

Sometimes people buy from eBay and place on FB market place  or other sites , when things don’t sell they return them . I actually had a repeat customer tell

me this is what they do .  Blocked them ! 

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I don't use or understand Facebook marketplace, but why would a seller need to have the item in hand to list it in facebook? Is it strictly local pickup? Can't they just stall their marketplace buyer for a few days and order the item after they make the sale?

[wastingtime101]

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@iamalwaysright wrote:

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

If I block in a situation like this with a repeat buyer, I message them telling them that they have excessive returns  and that we are blocking for a certain time period and then ask them to ask us more questions BEFORE they buy again. Then we can unblock.

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This is still currently not possible on ebay right? @wastingtime101 

The ebay glitch about how when you block a buyer they are still able to message you, but that message goes into limbo and the seller never receives it. This even happens if you check the box that says something like "allow blocked buyers to message me."

Did ebay ever fix that yet?

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It's by design @iamalwaysright; it's not a glitch. It creates issues daily for sellers but eBay has not budged no matter how much feedback kyle@ebay has passed on for us.

The OP potentially wanting to message their long time customer to figure out why they suddenly filed 10 or so returns after a couple months, while temporarily blocking them to prevent more purchases as they sort this out, is another good use case.

FYI @southern*sweet*tea you asked about this upthread. It changed a year ago - read about it here:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Changes-to-Buyer-Blocks/td-p/33977166

[gurlcat]

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@iamalwaysright wrote:

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@tammiegoldenhair wrote:

Sometimes people buy from eBay and place on FB market place  or other sites , when things don’t sell they return them . I actually had a repeat customer tell

me this is what they do .  Blocked them ! 

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I don't use or understand Facebook marketplace, but why would a seller need to have the item in hand to list it in facebook? Is it strictly local pickup? Can't they just stall their marketplace buyer for a few days and order the item after they make the sale?

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No FBMP is not strictly local pickup.   Sellers can do just like on eBay where they have only local pickup, only shipping, or both.  And when a buyer does a search they can filter their results for radius of distance, and (I believe) for delivery method as well.  

So theoretically a seller could dropship eBay items to FBMP buyers, in fact that probably happens.  Or they could order an item to be sent to their own address whilst stalling the local pickup buyer, as you suggest.  The only problem with that is, if the seller wants cash on the spot, they would have no guarantee that the buyer would actually show up, or if they did show up they could inspect the item and say it doesn't look as good as the photos and just leave.  Then the seller would have the item on their hands and need to decide what to do next. 

[iamalwaysright]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@iamalwaysright wrote:

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

If I block in a situation like this with a repeat buyer, I message them telling them that they have excessive returns  and that we are blocking for a certain time period and then ask them to ask us more questions BEFORE they buy again. Then we can unblock.

---

This is still currently not possible on ebay right? @wastingtime101 

The ebay glitch about how when you block a buyer they are still able to message you, but that message goes into limbo and the seller never receives it. This even happens if you check the box that says something like "allow blocked buyers to message me."

Did ebay ever fix that yet?

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It's by design @iamalwaysright; it's not a glitch. It creates issues daily for sellers but eBay has not budged no matter how much feedback kyle@ebay has passed on for us.

The OP potentially wanting to message their long time customer to figure out why they suddenly filed 10 or so returns after a couple months, while temporarily blocking them to prevent more purchases as they sort this out, is another good use case.

FYI @southern*sweet*tea you asked about this upthread. It changed a year ago - read about it here:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Changes-to-Buyer-Blocks/td-p/33977166

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Whoa, hold up there chief. Are you serious, that ebay said it's doing that by design???

I just tested it again just to see since it's been awhile. I had one of my accounts block my secondary account. I DID NOT check the box to "Don't allow blocked buyers to contact me" which logically should mean I AM allowing block buyers to contact me. The message sent from my secondary blocked account to my primary account seemed to have gone thru without any problems (according to what is being shown to my secondary acct). No errors or pop ups or anything. And my primary account is behaving as if my secondary account never sent a message at all, zero notifications. Basically it's behaving exactly as we remember.

But by design?? I'm having trouble understanding this logic. Here is a screenshot of how the option is being displayed nowadays and I circled that "message setting."

So if ebay is saying that this is all by design, then they never intended that "don't allow blocked buyers to contact me" option to do anything at all?? Absolutely nothing changes if we click that box or not, and this is part of ebay's plan??? What plan is that, to give sellers an illusion and a false sense of control? Say it ain't so Joe. 😭

[wastingtime101]

Funny how incredulous you are this isn't a tech error. That message setting applies exclusively to buyer blocks (location, unpaid items, etc). It does not apply to members on the blocked buyer list. They're treated differently. With buyer blocks we can control messaging. With the BBL we cannot.

If you re-read the thread I linked above, you'll see confirmation from Kyle this is how the eBay product team wants it to work.

Click that info box next to the setting and it will also confirm this is by design @iamalwaysright :

I encourage you to create discussion threads or add on to this one and tag kyle@ebay  any time you have a use case. I don't see eBay reversing course on this awful design that does nothing but make things harder for sellers and create animosity with buyers that think they're being ignored, unless eBay gets enough push back from sellers to put the decision back in our hands.

[wastingtime101]

Apparently I need a new screenshot because they redesigned that page. Here's a new screenshot showing the top of the BBL page. Note the bold text.

[iamalwaysright]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

Funny how incredulous you are this isn't a tech error.

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😉It's because of my

If ebay says it isn't a tech error, we gotta believe them otherwise nothing would make sense in this world.

[iamalwaysright]

Darn you last part of the bold text!

But that's also false. BBL buyers ARE able to send messages. They just go into message limbo and don't get delivered to the seller. That's another thing that's broken with this implementation. If it's by design, ebay should "design" a notification to the buyer that their message delivery failed.

[gurlcat]

So you see, that slider is only regarding blocked buyers, not blocked buyers.  Silly you!  
Now then, what shall we discuss next?  How about partial refunds versus partial refunds.   -Ooo, or how about 'dropshipping' versus 'retail arbitrage.'  -Now THERE'S two things that are obviously different and everyone agrees on which one is which, also eBay uses the language consistently and applies policy to them consistently.   🤣

[iamalwaysright]

Cancellation request vs cancellation order. They are both the same in the dictionary of ebay.