Lynn’s eBay ezine Volume III, issue number 47

‘How not to get 5 negative feedbacks in one week‘

by Lynn A. Dralle, ‘The Queen of Auctions’

As you all know, I started selling on eBay back in September of 1998. It took us until about November of 1999 before we got our first negative feedback. I still remember sitting in my grandfather’s old office in the antique store (that was now my office) staring at the computer screen. I think I may have even cried. I was upset for about two weeks!

The first negative feedback ever left for TheQueenofAuctions came from a woman who we bent over backwards to accommodate. Isn’t that always the way? She had bought an expensive doll from my grandmother’s collection and we had wrapped it incredibly well and shipped it UPS with insurance. Well, back then UPS could take 7 to 10 working days across country and she was NOT happy that it didn’t get to her the day after she purchased it Her negative feedback was all about how long it took to ship. Not about the product at all.

Oh well, I got over it and up until about two weeks ago, I only had 25 negatives in nine years of doing business. Not bad! And a 99.8% positive rating.

But, before I get too far into this article, I am going to explain the feedback system in case there are any of you reading this who are new to eBay.

Feedback is the system that eBay uses to regulate itself. It is the method eBay uses to stay a safe place to buy and sell. A user’s feedback is the number found next to their User ID. Once a transaction is completed, both the buyer and seller can leave feedback for one another:

+1 point for a positive

0 for a neutral

-1 point for a negative

The feedback score is the total of all the ratings that a member has received from unique users. What this means is that if I sell 15 items to one buyer and they are very happy and leave me 15 positive feedback comments, it will only count as one point.

So, as an example, I have only 14,878 next to my user ID today, even though I have had 21, 545 positive comments left for me. Many of them were from repeat customers and that is why there is a 6,670 difference in the two numbers.

I have often discussed this with Griff. It doesn’t make sense to me that we would be penalized (in a sense) for having happy repeat customers. Oh well, it is the way it is.

Now back to my road to 15,000! We hit the 10,000 mark in December of 2005. It took us seven years to get there.

I just found out today that my brother captured a screen shot of us hitting 10,000. How cool is that? I hope he is not on vacation when we hit 15,000!

It was funny, I said to my son Houston when it happened “It will probably take us another 7 years to hit 20,000,” and he said, “No it won’t, mom.” And you know what? I think he may be right!

Here is the reason. Or maybe I should say “was” the reason. I use Selling Manager Pro and I love it. About three years ago I started automating my feedback. There are two choices to doing this. One is to automatically leave feedback when the buyer pays and the other is to automatically leave feedback once the buyer has left you positive feedback.

Well, me being the trusting, naïve person that I am–I chose the “leave them feedback once they have paid.” It worked great for a while and as an example in the past 12 months we have received 4,456 positive points. Now remember, not all of these will count towards my visible total.

In the 3rd week of November, we received five negative feedback points in one week, taking my 25 negatives up to 30. I was devastated. It was raining negativity. However, my overall positive percentage is still the same at 99.8%. That makes it a little bit better. But not much.

So, what went wrong, you may ask? I think that as eBay has grown, more and more new eBayers are buying and once they see that I have left positive feedback they really have no reason to even contact me–they can just leave the negative.

It still amazes me that a new eBay buyer will not contact the seller before leaving the negative feedback. And what we have also found is that they are getting more and more impatient. At the Queen of Auctions we don’t answer emails from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. The buyers that are upset expect you to be at your computer from dawn until dusk.

Some of our recent negatives came from people who threatened us with “If I don’t hear back from you in 24 hours I am leaving negative feedback!” Yikes. They should get a life!

And almost all of the negatives were from the Dept. 56 Villages I sold recently. Remember this picture of them all?

What we didn’t know or realize until later was that some of the villages came with transformers and we didn’t find the transformers until after we had a lot of unhappy customers. We ended up refunding $15 to about ten buyers to purchase replacement transformers before I found the bag of them. It was a learning experience and a growing experience.

Carmen never wants to see another Dept. 56 village and I don’t blame her. So, I have moved all that are left for sale out into the garage and to further protect us from negative feedback (especially during this busy holiday season)–I have changed the feedback setting in Selling Manager Pro.

I now do NOT automatically leave positive feedback until positive feedback has first been left for me. I know that this will slow down the growth of our feedback number drastically. However, it is a trade off. Grow your feedback faster or reduce negative feedback. For today, I am choosing to reduce negative feedback.

Oh, on a better ending note. Here is how I nipped some potential negative feedback in the bud. A woman bought an entire dinner set from us. We quoted her $59.95 UPS s/h/I and she became upset. Started complaining even before it was shipped. It took 3 boxes to pack it all up safely (costing us about $55.00 by UPS), so I went into eBay and requested her phone number.

You can only request the contact information for someone you have a current transaction with. Here is how you do it. Click on the advanced search blue button. On the left hand side you will see Members and under that heading you will see Find Contact Information. Click on this.

You will be taken to a page where you type in the user ID and the current transaction number. Literally, within seconds you receive an email with your buyer’s name, address, email address and phone number. What a score! When you call a buyer that has been threatening you by email–all of a sudden they are your best friend. It is amazing when they can’t hide behind their computers to see how their demeanor changes.

I called my buyer and explained how we only wanted to ship her china safely and what our actual charges were. All of a sudden, everything was right in her world and ours!

The best part of this story is that it only took us two years to get those 5,000 positive feedback points. Houston was right, we will probably make it to our second 10,000 (20,000) in only four years (instead of the seven years it took us for our first 10,000)!!

Happy eBaying!