How to respond to a blocked buyer?

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

Hi all, I recently received an offer on one of my item. The offer price was about 50% (which isn't too bad - many buyers choose that as a starting point), but when I looked up the buyer's feedback history, I noticed that they left 15 negative/neutral feedbacks out of 100 feedbacks they left for sellers. I read those feedback and it's all compliants about slow shipping time (I think 12 days isn't too bad) or poor communication. I also checked those sellers and they didn't receive a ton of negs. So it seems like it's a buyer who do abuse the feedback system if there is a tiny little thing they didn't like about the item.

As I'm too busy to deal with buyers like this with my FT job (I'd like to keep my 100% FB and 5.0 DSRs, thank you), I declined this buyer's offer with a message saying that his/her offer is too low, thanks for looking, and then I put them on my blocked buyer list. Now this buyer messaged me asking for details on the condition/content of the book and asked me to give them a price for them to consider. I'm not interested in completing this sale at all. What's a good way to respond to this buyer so that this settles nicely without this buyer trying to harrass me later or anything like that?

One interesting thing to mention is that this buyer uses terrible net-speak in their message. And they complain about sellers not communicating properly lol. Here is part of their message:

sir
befor i mack anothere offer i need to now
how good this book is ok
what is a far offer?
plz let me now asp
thank you

That's such a difficult question to answer, because whether a book is "good" or not is subjective...

[pierrelebel]

Blocking bidders and buyers

If you don't want to sell to certain members, you can put their user IDs on your blocked list. Members on the list can’t bid on any of your listings until you remove them from the list. You can block up to 5,000 user IDs.

By default, these members also won't be able to contact you about your listings, but you can change this setting by following the instructions in the Setting up buying requirements section below.

Note: You can choose not to allow blocked buyers to contact you. Blocked buyers will still be able t... 

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sell/manage_bidders_ov.html

"What's a good way to respond"

Whenever I received an inquiry from a user on my blocked list (several hundreds - including many added based on their posts on these boards) I honestly tell them that their name is on the "blocked list" and, as such, I cannot complete transactions with them.  I then wish them youd luck in their quest.

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

"Note: You can choose not to allow blocked buyers to contact you. Blocked buyers will still be able to contact you about existing transactions, unless you add them to your blocked list."

Hmm, this person was already on my blocked list when they messaged me. What settings can I do to make sure that they can't contact me again?

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

nevermind, I found it now. I have set it so that blocked buyers can't contact me. Thanks pierre!

[brandeentertainment]

Now that you have blocked them just tell them the truth.. It's fun every once in a awhile to give someone a dose of reality ..

FYI this is totally a bad recommendation but it feels good sometimes to let those grumpy unreasonable people see what effects there negativity has on there ebay shopping experience.....

[reallynicestamps]

I don't respond to Blocked Bidders at all.

To answer truthfully I would have to figure out why the guy was on my BBL. And that is too much work for a sale I don't want.

Your guy would have lost me at the "netspeak". (I don't mind obvious ESL, but coldblooded murder of a perfectly nice language like English is not acceptable.)

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

Oh, but I put this guy on my BBL after they made an offer (I always check out the buyer's feedback history before I accept/decline/negiotiate an offer on my items to determine if it's worthwhile). This guy (assuming it's a he) left neutral feedbacks for items that he said was "item was good but that's it"... which I thought wasn't very fair. Some of those sellers he left negs/neutrals for, only had one neg/neutral and it's from him. Because of that I don't think it's worth my time to deal with this buyer, especially when I can only mail things on a weekly basis with my full time job.

Anyhow, I responded and told the guy that because he was on our blocked bidder list, I cannot complete transaction with him, as Pierre suggested. Now this guy messaged me again (despite I already adjusted my BBL to not accept messages from people on BBL, and I even put my other account on BBL to make sure it's working properly), probably because we already contacted before, and asked the following:

realy?

ok who listed me & why did i get on that list?

Should I bother responding or just ignore?

My only concern is that if this guy isn't happy with my response, he might end up opening a new account to buy from me just to neg me and kill my DSRs...

[brandeentertainment]

Just tell him .. You take pride in your feedback and you noticed he would leave feedback to sellers for a service that had nothing to do with sellers "Shipping" and you did not want to chance ruining your feedback ...

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

I'm actually thinking of saying "Due to confidentially reasons, I cannot reveal that information to you. Bottom line is, we cannot sell any of our items to you. Sorry."

Too bad my eBay messaging doesn't work here on my work computer or else I could've responded already (it's too old... who the heck still uses Window XP?!).