Challenge Your Buyers

[travis7s]

3 times this holiday season I have had buyers message me with some kind of complaint. All 3 times I have challenged these people to actually return the item for a full refund and magically their problem has resolved itself. The following is my last exchange:

"You sent me the wrong item. It does not even match the description. It is supposed to be a slightly used set of xxxxxxx season one and two in English.
Instead you sent me a new, unopened set of xxxxxxx in German. I don’t speak German.
I need you to send me the correct ones that you advertised and that I ordered.
Here are photos.."    *provides actual photos of a German DVD*

"Hi xxxxxxx, sorry to hear there is an issue with your order. I only sell Region A (North American) DVDs so this is really weird and I only had 1 copy of this DVD so I assume this must have been tampered with in transit. I can open a fraud investigation with Canada Post on Monday and see if I can get some answers. In the meantime, you are free to open a return case with Ebay for a full refund. The incorrect item can be sent back using the same method (and packaging if you still have it) which is Canada Post Oversize Lettermail for total cost of $4.66. This will be fully reimbursed along with the full purchase price of the item when it is received."

"After looking into this further and talking to my husband I found out that two orders were placed for xxxxxxx from my account.
One was a single season from you, as a gift for someone, and one was a double set from England for our cottage. It turns out the mixed up one was the double set from England.
Please accept my apology for the mix up. Your DVD arrived without issue."

This was a low value sale for me, last year I would have just wrote it off and refunded, but this year (2020) I decided I would force all returns. I can't be certain if this person is a scammer or made a legitimate bizarre mistake, but either way its paid off for me to write a 30 second reply.

[femmefan1946]

I agree.

I send almost everything untracked which I realize leaves me open to false INR claims.

But I believe that asking the customer to open a Dispute "to keep the record straight" has saved me a lot of problems over the past 20 years. Because the phoney claimants don't want to be on the record, whatever it might be.

Even so, I find my problem cases are well under the 1% that is given as the industry standard.

Although the rumour mill has it that AZ has a 40% returns rate. Wow. I won't be buying any stock in that company soon.

Best thing I ever learned was that Canadians can send a USPS return shipping label to an unhappy customer.  And that if it is not used , forcing the complainant's hand, we eventually have it creditted back.

[needsmorerobots]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

I agree.

I send almost everything untracked which I realize leaves me open to false INR claims.

But I believe that asking the customer to open a Dispute "to keep the record straight" has saved me a lot of problems over the past 20 years. Because the phoney claimants don't want to be on the record, whatever it might be.

Even so, I find my problem cases are well under the 1% that is given as the industry standard.

Although the rumour mill has it that AZ has a 40% returns rate. Wow. I won't be buying any stock in that company soon.

Best thing I ever learned was that Canadians can send a USPS return shipping label to an unhappy customer.  And that if it is not used , forcing the complainant's hand, we eventually have it creditted back.

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I have to agree with the AZ assessment. I'm an AZ Prime customer and I return so many things. It's been due to wrong item, item doesn't work or work properly or it's been damaged in shipping. I find the last part happens a heck of a lot more frequently with AZ delivered items than it does with eBay. The last item I ordered from AZ is being returned cause they sent it in a flimsy bag with very little protection.

[femmefan1946]

You ordered something from AZ and it actually turned up?

Lucky you.

I've ordered three books from there and only one ever showed. And I can't figure out how to get a refund. The latter is my problem, although they may be hiding the link for that.

Interestingly, I list some of my eBay books on AZ and get very few sales. Yet about a third of my titles are the lowest price on AZ. This is in spite of selling for the same price on eBay with Free Shipping (usually $9.99) and on AZ plus $6.49 shipping.

[travis7s]

Not in my experience. I do around 400 AZ orders a year and I would say only 1% of the time I have a legit problem. Keep in mind I only order things fulfilled by AZ and I don't buy any of those weird off brand Chinese items.

Easiest way to get help (on desktop) is to scroll to the very bottom and find "Customer Service". From there you can select which order and open a Live Chat which is generally very helpful. I've never tried to do a return/refund with the app.

[travis7s]

Back to my original topic, here's another one that just came in today and this was for a $200+ toy.

"Hello, I just got the package and the chips are all great, put new batteries in both and one powered on properly but the other just beeps and doesn’t stop and shows a glitched screen, cant find any fixes online."

Hi xxxxxx, really sorry to hear you are having issues, something must have happened during transit. Unfortunately I can't offer any technical advice but you are entitled to a full refund and since the item is broken I will be responsible for the return shipping costs. Please feel free to open a return case through Ebay to begin the process.

"Actually it’s okay! I opened it up and it looked like a wire was a bit loose, I just soldered it back down and it runs great now! I’ll definitely be keeping it, I’ll make sure to give a great review, thank you so much!"