goWholesale

This post contains some suggestions I have which may or may not work for you. Using these suggestions is done at your own risk.

I have to admit that I was too idealistic when establishing my terms of sales on eBay. I started my eBay business back in October with the goal of running a buyer friendly business with buyer friendly policies. I can’t tell you how many sellers have policies that are not buyer friendly. I wanted to stand out from the crowd and be different. Nearly 400 transactions later, I am learning that my idealistic views were just that, idealistic and not practical.

I am writing this post to share with you some of my experiences. This post is mainly geared to those just starting out on eBay. Those that have established eBay businesses probably already know this as I am changing my policies to be more in line with more established businesses.

Here are the problems I had and how I am revising my policies.

1) I suggest imposing a restocking fee on customer returns (30% in my case) and don’t refund the S/H fees for customer returns.

My original policy was that everyone who buys from my company gets a 10-day satisfaction guarantee which would provide a full refund (including original shipping and handling charges) and no restocking fees for customer returns within the first 10 days.

This hasn’t worked out too well. This ends up attracting people who want to buy gifts for others but don’t know what the other person wants. This results in returns for perfectly good products. This also results in returns because people change their mind after receiving the product for reasons other than defects.

Whatever the case, once a product is returned, you can’t sell it as new. You might want to have a 30% restocking fee to help cover the lower sales price you will get when you re-list the product as a customer return.

Also, refunding the S/H charges is a bad idea. At first it sounds fair, the customer pays to ship the item back, you should refund what they paid you to ship the product to them. In reality, it really isn’t fair because this is an out of pocket expense you incurred on behalf of the customer for the customers mistake (i.e. bad gift or whatever).

Additionally, the handling costs should not be refunded because you are going to have to take the time and expense to re-list the item again and it may take several auctions to re-sell it (I’ve heard the average eBay auction close is around 40%).

I’ve therefore changed my policy so that the S/H charges are not refunded and there is a 30% restocking fee. The only waiver to this is if the item is defective or the advertisement was wrong. My company would be the sole deciding factor in determining an error in an advertisement or whether the product is really defective. Allowing a legitimate out might offer some protection against someone who would otherwise file a valid complaint.

2) Don’t leave feedback until the buyer leaves you feedback first

My original policy was to leave feedback at the time of shipment. This supports a common claim that the buyer has fulfilled their obligation and you should leave them positive feedback after payment.

In reality, this really puts you at the mercy of unreasonable customers. Once a customer gets feedback, they can try to make demands like holding you responsible for the postal services slow delivery. Worse, I got a neutral from an eBay customer with a score of over 500. You would think this customer would at least try to contact me first (my policy at the time was a full refund, no restocking fee, plus refunding S/H charges). But no, I got a neutral without even a single email asking for help. I suspect that this customer (with no negatives on their feedback) would have thought twice about leaving a neutral before contacting me had he/she known my feedback was not yet issued.

3) Clearly state when you will ship the item on the terms of sale

I can’t tell you how many times I have had an auction that closes and the customer takes 4 or 5 days to pay for it and demands immediate shipment because it is a gift or whatever. Had they paid timely, there would have been no problem.

I run a one person operation (yeah I’m small). It is extremely impractical to ship items out 6 days a week. You will be so pre-occupied with packaging and other things that you will not have time to do new listings and researching new products and all the other things that need to be done to run a tiny company. You need to clearly draw the line on this issue or customers will just kill you with demands. In fact, in addition to placing this in the terms of sales, I recommend adding this as part of your payment instructions because it such a common problem.

My new policy states that I only ship Tuesdays and Fridays. In addition, to be eligible for Tuesdays shipment, you must pay me by 1pm PST Monday and to be eligible for Fridays shipment, you must pay me by 1pm PST Thursday. eBay is an international market place, so be sure to always reference your time zone.

4) Impose a feedback bid requirement for all bidders

Based on the eBay message board and my experience, it seems that deadbeat bidders is becoming more and more of a problem. You can almost spot them a mile away. They are usually the ones with a 0 as their feedback score or a score under 10 with at least one or more complaints. This is a good indication that you might be wasting your time and holding your inventory for a deadbeat when you could have had a sale to a legitimate buyer.

To assist in this matter, I have imposed a feedback rating of 95% or higher and the NB’s, those with a 0 score, must email me first before bidding over $10.

5) Make postal insurance an option for every item sold and disclaim all responsibility

If you package an item carefully, why should you be responsible for a damaged shipment? Personally, I have yet to have someone receive a damaged shipment, but I have had a couple of cases of claimed lost shipments. Worse, these shipments were confirmed delivered from the postal delivery service.

I suggest clearly stating that although you carefully package a product, damage can occur and you are not responsible for damages or loss during delivery and thus offer insurance on all purchases.

Also, it is a good idea to inform customers that the insurance quote in the ad is an estimate and if the actual amount is higher, the customer will pay it. Why? Suppose you sell an item and expect it to close at $40 so you quote $1.30 insurance. It closes at $65 and the customer sends you a payment including $1.30 for insurance before you send out an invoice, when the actual insurance is now $2.20. Without that statement, it can be tough getting that 90 cent payment from the customer and every nickel and dime counts when margins are slim.

6) Impose a 10-day hold time on checks and a policy for non-sufficient fund checks

I got a cashier check from a customer along with a personal check. The customer did not add in the sales tax at the time of getting the cashier check and wrote a small personal check for the sales tax. Well, it just so happened that the small check bounced and worse, there is a non-sufficient check charge on top of that which was even larger than the amount owed. Do you really want to be out the items on top of that?

This check also had a statement that the customer was a platinum customer. I expected any back would clear a check for under $3 for a platinum customer, but no, they wont. According to the bank, it’s just words on a piece of paper. So hold your items until checks clear, even for established eBay users. After all, if it bounces, you need to get them to reimburse you for the non-sufficient fund charge on top of the product charge.

7) If you ship internationally, clearly state that you will not lie on the custom form

I find that about 1 in 3 or even higher request items to be marked as gifts instead of merchandise to avoid custom duties. Put it in your terms of sales that you wont do that and the customer is responsible for all custom duties.

8) Clearly state how the item will be shipped

I now state that I use either first class mail or parcel post, and no other service is available. Believe it or not, on several occasions I’ve had customers request an overnight delivery on a $7 S/H charge.

There are many other things I have done but they have not yet been tested for practicality so I will not list them here.

Any other ideas are sure welcome. Keep in mind, I think for the purpose of this topic, the ideas should be focused on protecting the seller from abusive buyers.

DESCRIPTION:

[brefly descibe your product]

ITEM CONDITION:

[NEW, USED, REfurbish, broken part]

shopgreatvalues wrote:3) Clearly state when you will ship the item on the terms of sale

I can't tell you how many times I have had an auction that closes and the customer takes 4 or 5 days to pay for it and demands immediate shipment because it is a gift or whatever. Had they paid timely, there would have been no problem.

I run a one person operation (yeah I'm small). It is extremely impractical to ship items out 6 days a week. You will be so pre-occupied with packaging and other things that you will not have time to do new listings and researching new products and all the other things that need to be done to run a tiny company. You need to clearly draw the line on this issue or customers will just kill you with demands.

This whole thread is extremely interesting to me as a new eBayer. I took almost all of the advice in it but I run shipping in a slightly different way: I do all the packing at once, before the item is put up for auction. I label each package and weigh them for the sake of accuracy on my postal calculator.

The problem came up, though, that someone wanted me to combine shipping. You know, by the time I unpacked the items and repacked them, they weighed MORE together than they had apart - and then she didn't buy wither of them anyway!

Now I've set a policy that I will ship daily, and anything paid by 10PM EST will be shipped the next day; and that I will NOT combine shipping. And I tell them why. It's not so much of a hassle doing shipping more frequently when they're already packaged, and they get an accurate shipping calculation.

-llasher

virago222 wrote:A good place to purchase insurance is http://www.you-pic.com. Prices can be more than half that of what the post office charges (when I first signed up, it cost me 60 cents to insure up to $100), the process is easier (I have filed 3 claims, one for almost $300, without any hassle), and you don't have to wait in line at the post office to purchase it. They even have a flat-rate program now which is beyond simple and convenient. You just pay the flat-rate at the beginning of the month and everything you send (using a method that's included in your contract) is automatically insured no matter what their value is (although there may be a limit). We ship close to 300 packages a month through the post office and fedex and the flat-rate we pay is a bargain.

Does this company still exist? The website doesn't work.

Hello everyone. It's been a while since I have been around but, I have a problem with Ebay and I am at my wits end. the first problem is that I listed a few items and a couple of days later I went to check on them to see how they were comming along and they were not there! I could not find them anywhere. I never got an email stating what happened or where they went. I was pissed so I wrote to ebay 3x's and no response. I had a strict no (0) feedback bidders without contacting me first. A lady contacted me and asked if she could bid I told her she could and suddenly my auctions where shut down. So firstly what I found it is there are these lurkers 2 kinds. the 1st kind reports you to Ebay so you get shut down secondly is a lurker with (0) feedback who has been a registered user for years but has no feedback! these kind of people bid on your auctions with no intent to pay just to knock you out of the competition of other sellers selling same or similar products. This has happened to me 10x's already. If you leave them feedback they recipricate with the same. Ebay listens to these reports of misuse from people who are bored and not even on there payroll. This costs me and other sellers time and money as your fees are not refunded. Now I have a specific lurker who shuts me down for every little thing. I am a single mother who is trying to make a living. So woth that I have gone to Ioffer.com much better and you can see all the transactions people have made with or without feedback. And you can pick and choose who you sell too. If you dont want (0) bidders don't accept there offer. ebay is getting totally out of control. Thanks for the vent -Jackie

Jaxie23
add the lurkers if you know their id to your banned bidders list on ebay,
also file non-paying bidder reports you'll get your final value fee credited, three non paying bidder gets them banned from ebay.

Once the final value fee has been credited you can relist for free I believe. Although that means hanging around for a couple of weeks

bubba76819 wrote:Of course it's only my two cents, but I could never run my business the way the author of the post does...but that's just me.

I've been selling on ebaY for about 5 years, am a PowerSeller and a Trading Assistant.

I offer a full money-back satisfaction guaranteed policy. Why would anyone buy from someone who doesn't. If you're running hundreds of auctions per week, as I am, you can't worry about the one or two dorks who didn't read this or that. You just take care of people and build your business. You do that and they come back. I have about 700 feedbacks that don't even count towards my rating...because they're from REPEAT customers.

I agree with this. If you are willing to deal with the occassional dorks on this, then that is great as your ad will be more appealing with less restrictions. For me, I really don't want to deal with these dorks but at the same time I don't want to be unreasonable so I do offer a refund for S/H fees plus the purchase price if the item is defective. For non-defective items, I reduced the restocking fee to a more modest 15%.

bubba76819 wrote:You have to ship everyday. It's silly not to. You put a restriction on when the buyer has to pay, but you only ship this day or that....as a buyer how does that make me feel? I ship stuff everyday if need be. The post office even picks it up for free now.

I usually ship every day now. The change came when I stopped shipping internationally which required me to drive to the post office and wait in line. The tradeoff is a slightly lower selling price as you will not get international bidders. In any case, I think it is still a good idea to state item will be shipped within 24 hours or 48 hours just so that your customers will know when to expect the product.

bubba76819 wrote:Spell out your auction terms, but I wouldn't make threats in my ad. You're trying to encourage people, build trust, build a relationship. Well, I am. Maybe you're not. Maybe you just want to dump your !@#$, make a few bucks and move on. But if you're running a business and trying to make a living, you've got to approach it differently.

I agree, never leave threats in your ads. A post I left later on this topic mentioned that I removed the treat of disclaiming all responsibility. I now include insurance in the S/H price or state I will accept responsibility if the post office electronic confirmation shows the item as not delivered. I also removed the threat of bidding requirements ever since eBay gave me the ability to automatically ban buyers who are either outside the U.S. or have a negative feedback score.

bubba76819 wrote:I leave feedback when I'm paid. It's the only ethical thing to do. I know this is a huge debate in the ebaY community, but that's where it's at. If the buyer paid in a timely manner, then they've fulfilled their commitment to you. You base your feedback on that. I've run thousands of auctions, and even gotten a few negatives. So what? I've got a 99.7% positive feedback rating. If you don't give the customer a reason to leave you a negative, then you've got nothing to worry about, right?

I agree with this as well. A post I made later mentioned that I have been leaving feedback after payment has been made. However, my terms of sale still state that I'll leave it after I receive feedback first. I disregard this 99% of the time and I think my customers are pleasantly surprised when they get a positive feedback within hours of making a sale.

I left this in so that I have at my option the ability to hold off on feedback if someone has a history of leaving negatives to 98% plus sellers.

Labuzan I think we must be selling very similar goods our policies are pretty identical.

Feedback I have set to automatically leave once the customer has paid and has left positive for me

Payment reminders are again sent out automatically by selling manager pro, NPB alerts are raised and followed through until credits are received.
A notice regarding this is stated very clearly on all my auctions.

I ship every week day Monday to Friday.

I'm quite flexible with returns, but that's due to get tightened soon.