Coping with Complaints About You

Of course, it's always possible that a disgruntled customer will accuse you of various types of wrongdoing. What do you do when you've been (presumably unjustly) accused?

Responding to Negative Feedback

Probably the most common form of customer complaint on eBay takes the form of negative feedback. Since maintaining a high feedback rating is important to the long-term success of your eBay business, you need to respond appropriately to any negative feedback you receive.

Unfortunately, there's not much you can do if you receive negative feedback; feedback comments cannot be retracted, except in the most extreme instances. What you can do is respond to the negative comments, thus providing some sort of balance to the original negativity.

Start by going to the Feedback Forum page (pages.ebay.com/services/forum/feedback.html), shown in Figure 18.7, and clicking the Reply to Feedback Received link. This takes you to a page that displays a listing of all your feedback. Click the link associated with the feedback you want to address; when the next page appears, enter your response in the text box and click the Leave Reply button. Your new comment is now listed below the original feedback comment on the Feedback Profile page.

Figure 18.7. Use eBay's Feedback Forum to respond to negative feedback.

Getting Negative Feedback Removed

If you feel that negative feedback has been left maliciously, you can petition eBay to remove the feedback. It won't often do so, except in extreme casesbut there's no harm in asking.

You can learn more about feedback removal at pages.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-removal.html. Scroll through the text until you find the Contact Us link near the bottom of the page; click this link to display the web form for feedback removal. Enter the appropriate information and click the Submit button. If eBay agrees with your arguments, you'll be notified that the feedback in question has been removed. If not, you won't.

Note

eBay also offers a Mutual Feedback Withdrawal process, for those instances when both you and the seller agree to remove the negative feedback. Use the form located at feedback.ebay.com/ws/ eBayISAPI.dll?MFWRequest.

Responding to Item Not Received Complaints

In its quest to assuage the fears of new or reluctant buyers, eBay has instituted a new complaint process for those buyers who do not receive their items within a reasonable period of time. This Item Not Received or Significantly Not as Described process started out with good intentions, but quickly fell victim to the law of unintended consequences. The problem with the process is that buyers can file a complaint if they haven't received an item within 10 days of the end of the auction. Do your math, and you can easily see that many transactions will fall outside this arbitrary waiting period.

Take, for example, the buyer who pays by personal check. Even if the buyer sends the check the day after the auction (and many don't), you won't receive it until 3 days or so after the auction. You then hold the check for 10 business days, to make sure it clears, and then ship the itemwhich takes another 3 days to get to the buyer. Add in a weekend or two, and it might take 1820 days for the buyer to receive the merchandisewell outside eBay's 10-day period.

The 10-day period is also problematic when a buyer pays by cashier's check or money order and doesn't mail the payment promptly. Or if the transaction period falls over a holiday or 3-day weekend. Or if you ship via Parcel Post or Media Mail. Or...well, you see the problem. It's no surprise that the Item Not Received process has not been well received by eBay's selling community.

So it's quite possible that you might sell an item to a newbie buyer who starts panicking when 10 days pass and the item doesn't show up on his or her doorstep. Fortunately, nothing major happens if the buyer files a claim at the 10-day mark. Once the buyer files a claim, eBay notifies you (the seller) of the claim and asks for a response; no formal action is taken until 30 days after the end of the listing. If, at that time, the buyer hasn't received the item (or the two of you haven't communicated and worked something out), the buyer has the option of escalating the complaint into eBay's Standard Purchase Protection Program.

At that point eBay can get involved and refund the buyer's money (up to $200) and take action against you as a seller. That action could result in a formal warning, a temporary suspension, or an indefinite suspension. Of course, it's also possible that eBay could evaluate the situation and take no action against you. The outcome depends on the situation.

Obviously, if you're doing your job right, no complaint should escalate into the Standard Purchase Protection Program. If you do get an Item Not Received complaint, make sure you respond and inform the buyer why he or she hasn't received the item yet. The key here is communicationespecially when you're dealing with inexperienced buyers.