Is the eBay Customer Always Right?

By Hendra Subrata Liu

I can answer this question for you right now: the answer is 'yes'. In fact, the answer is 'YES!' - the biggest yes you've ever heard. Of the course the customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, however much time or money it might cost you.

A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.

But What If…

But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer. Here are a few common situations and how to handle them.

They say the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn't arrived. If it still hasn't arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. No, I don't care what that costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?

The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.

They say the item doesn't match the description: Resist the urge to email back with "yes it does, you just didn't read the description properly". Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

I'm sure you're spotting a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.

You should always handle customers' complaints before they complain to eBay - in fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.

Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let's say you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer's $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week's profit. It's far better to look at it this way: if you don't give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week's profit, but you'll probably lose a few weeks' profit after that too. Now which option looks better?

I absolutely can't emphasise enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints isn't the only thing you need to avoid. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you don't want to kill your business before it's even started properly - and I'll show you in the next email what they are.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

What's Your eBay Reputation Really Worth?

By Hendra Subrata Liu

Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay - without it, you're nothing. Your reputation is worth
as much as every sale you will ever make.

If you've ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour.
Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying
from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands doesn't require any thought or fear - it feels just
like buying from a shop.

A Bad Reputation Will Lose Your Sales.

In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback,
you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone
to see. Who's going to want to do business with you when they've just read that you "took a month to deliver
the item", or that you had "bad communication and sent a damaged item"? The answer is no-one.

Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page. You might
have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal
with you again.

It's even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback - once you get below 90% positive
ratings, you might as well be invisible.

You Can't Just Open a New Account.

Besides eBay's rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a
new account. You literally have to start all over again from scratch.

You won't be able to use all the different eBay features. Your existing customers won't be able to find you
any more. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating. Opening a new
account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumours about you:
it's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

A Good Reputation Will Get Your Sales

When a PowerSeller tells me something, I tend to believe them. They can be selling a pretty unlikely item,
but if they guarantee it is what they say it is, then I trust them - they're not going to risk their
reputation, after all. This is the power of a reputation: people know you want to keep it, and they know
you'll go to almost any lengths to do so.

This is true even to the point that I would sooner buy something for $20 from a seller I know I can trust
than for $15 from someone with average feedback. It's worth the extra money to feel like the seller knows
what they're doing, has all their systems in place and will get me the item quickly and efficiently.

You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there's only way to get a good reputation:
make sure you please your customers every time. But some customers can be, well, just a little difficult
to please. In the next email, we ask: is the eBay customer always right?

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com