The final step in an eBay transaction
August 2, 2007 by Bob
OK, so you have purchased items to sell on eBay, you’ve listed them on the site, gotten bids, sold them and shipped the items to your customers. It sounds like everything is complete now, right? Not quite! The final step in the auction is perhaps the most important of all, and that is feedback! eBay has a system where you can leave comments about the seller or the buyer in any eBay transaction. These comments are all archived and are used to create your feedback profile on the site. Your overall rating in this feedback will determine just how successful you are on eBay.
If you get much negative feedback at all, people will start shying away from your auctions, and will buy from somebody else instead of you. Let’s face it, almost any item on eBay can be found from other sellers too, unless it is something that you made yourself. Even then, perhaps a similar item can still be found, even if not exact. If you are showing a track record of negative feedback, people will just stop buying from you.
How do you get positive feedback? Let’s look at some tips:
- Always be honest with your buyer. No matter what the question is, always tell the truth. Even if the truth is not positive, don’t hide it! As a matter of fact, if the item you are selling has some kind of flaw, be sure to list that in the auction, so people will be aware. The simple fact that you are willing to point out the flaws will make people trust you more!
- Always answer every e-mail within a reasonable time. If you are selling on eBay, it is expected that you will be available for questions and such. If somebody e-mails you, don’t hide! Answer the e-mail as quickly as you can. If you wait and wait before answering, it will anger your buyers, and when they leave feedback, they will likely ding you for that!
- When you spell out on the auction what you will do, follow it! If you say that you will ship the item within 2 days, do it! If you say that you will e-mail the tracking number for the shipment, don’t forget! Whatever you say on the auction, follow it! Same for the items you list, make sure that the item you send is exactly what you said it will be! Don’t ever send something “similar” because it will kill you down the road when it’s time for feedback!
- Always be friendly! No matter if your customer gets angry, and makes you angry, when you e-mail them, be friendly! Remember, you are running a business, and one rule of business is that the customer is always right - even when you know they are not! So, be friendly, be accommodating as much as possible, and never get angry! An angry customer will often become disarmed when you respond to them in a kind way!
One of my sacred rules of leaving feedback is that I never leave feedback first! In my auctions I put something like “I guarantee to leave you appropriate feedback when the transaction is complete.” Now, for me, the transaction is not complete until the other person has left feedback! Sometimes people ask me why I don’t leave feedback first. I say that the transaction is not “complete” until I am certain that I have done everything I need to do to make the customer happy. I can’t be sure that the customer is 100% happy until they have left feedback for me and said that they are happy. If the customer doesn’t like that policy, I simply don’t leave feedback if they have not done so. The main reason for this is that some customers will leave you negative feedback for little or no reason, and they also will not even e-mail you to try to work out any possible problem. For example, let’s say that you have shipped an item to a person half way around the world. When the item arrived at their doorstep it was broken. I do not feel this is a case where negative feedback should be left by the customer, because if the item broke in transit, that was beyond the control of the seller. A more appropriate way of handling this would be for the buyer to contact the seller and see what can be done. Perhaps there was postal insurance on the item,which will pay for the damage!
So, remember, always do everything you possibly can to obtain positive feedback from your customers! The more positive feedback you can get for your account, the more people will be willing to do business with you! Also, if you get a negative feedback rating from a customer, don’t lose sleep over it. It’s rare to have a perfect record! Just learn from the mistake, and try to improve your performance on your future transactions!
Hi Bob,
very interesting points on your feed back style, its a good idea.
At the moment I am trying to build a profile so I have been leaving good feedback first. However, One person has bought from me, he lives in switzerland (Iam in UK) I have offered to pay the postage and learned from my mistake and another has complained about additional items not being discounted in the postage costs , even though I have set my additional postage costs as £1 per additional item. I waived the fee on that also as they have much better scores than I do. I am at their mercy in a way until I have score that speaks for itself don’t you think?
I still have not found anything that will make me any regular income though! But I have made a profit albeit a small one so far, and I will keep the faith with you ‘cos you really seem like a decent chap!
Just give me more advice!
Kind regards
Phil
Hi Phil - What’s done is done, nothing you can do to change it now. But, just do your best to satisfy the customers on these transactions, even if it costs you a little money. On future transactions you can use what you have learned to improve your operation! No doubt!
Thanks for the “vote of confidence.”
Bob, just a question? What if i dont have any feedback yet, would that turnoff potential buyers? how many do you need to be considered a decent seller?
Hi Jerico - Yes, if you have no feedback at all, or very little feedback, most people will be a little scared to buy from you. The key is, as I had said in an earlier post, buy things first. For every item you buy, make sure you get feedback. Also, you can sell small items for $1 or less. Sell things like recipes, which you can sell cheaply, and just deliver by e-mail. Even if you loose a little money on the transaction, it’s worth it for the feedback!
I recommend that you get at least 30 on your feedback score before selling more expensive items. The higher your score, of course, the better!
Bob,
is that you with the 4,600+ ebay transactions?
Do you ship much from the Fils to the US? thanks so much for your helpful info. arto
Hi Arto - It is my policy that I do not reveal my eBay identity publicly. That way, I can comment here and reveal things that I would not necessarily want to reveal if my identity on eBay was public. I will say that, my eBay feedback is over 3,800 (but not 4,600 like the person you describe). I have not sold on eBay for more than 2 years now, but I may do it again someday.
Regarding shipping from the Philippines? When I was an active eBay seller here in the Philippines, my shipping bills were usually more than $1,000 per day (yes, that’s dollars), so you could say I shipped a lot of stuff!
Hi Bob. Thanks again for the tip. I think im already getting the importance of the feeback system. The other im browsing the forums in ebay and i found this thread in the clothing section. There are guys( or i should say gals) complaining about another seller whose items sell like pancakes. They say that the only reason she is selling alot of her non- branded clothes is bec she is modelling the stuff, and she has big boobs. Well i visited the store, and true enough, every item has a bid (and yes, the *cough* is big) On average the she has about 10-12 item a day, listed in diff times. And she is earning an average of $40 a pop. Here rating is a whooping 100% with a total of 400+ feeback and she is a powerseller. People in that thread seems very jealous of this girl. Well, i searched for the same thread again. Someone mentioned that the same seller slipped in her rating big time after getting 5 bad feedbacks. I thought it is a big slip, ya know, below 80 or 70% bec the same people who is jealous of this girl seems pretty satisfied of what happened. But guess what, her rating is still within the 90 range. And yet when i saw the bids in her, you can see the slight decrease. out of 10 items, thre are only 6 bids today. I do know if that is bec of the feeback score, but to me it seems that it is the reason. There is another thing that made me realize how important to maintain your feeback score: when i tried to check the bad feebacks, it turned out that it all came from just one person. Apparently, the guy bough a lot of item from this seller, and relisted the items using the same description and the same picture that the seller used. so, the seller blocked him(her?) from bidding again. Well, the angry buyer went after her feedback score.
The morale of the story: Feedback score can easily be ruined by complaining buyers; there are still people who dont respect intellectual property rights; gossip exist in Ebay as well; and the most important, sexy body sells cheap lokking clothes big time.
Hi Jerico - Yep, you are really catching on! Ha ha…. I Have seen the same thing happen where a very sexy woman sells the clothes and models them - they always sell well!
Regarding the feedback, that is exactly why I advise to always leave feedback last.