Dealing With Difficult Customers in 3 Easy Steps

Scenario:  You shipped an order to this “new” eBayer, she only has 26 positive feedback points. She claimed that 1⁄2 of what she ordered is missing and that of the six dinner plates and four cup and saucer sets she should have received, she only got three dinner plates and two cup and saucer sets.  To back up her claim, she says that the box only weighs five pounds but that on the UPS label we claim that it weighs ten pounds, so she knows that her dinnerware did not get sent to her.

What You Remember: Shipping the entire set of six plates and four cups sets, and none of it is left in your house.

What to do now?  Here is how we deal with these types of problems:

1. Kill them with Kindness
Because eBay is all web-based, we never actually get to meet or talk to our customers. They are “faceless” to us and we are “faceless” to them. This is why it is important to try my first step in the process and “Kill them with kindness.”  If you’ve tried to email them but it didn’t go through, request their user ID information and actually call them.  Most customers are shocked to actually receive a phone call about their order.

Here is a link on eBay where you can request a user’s contact information.

2. Offer a Partial Refund
Offering a partial refund works wonders. This can really keep your return costs down and make your customers very happy.  Asking them to name the price also keeps the cost down as most people will be embarrassed to ask for too much.

If your customer doesn’t go for the partial refund and expects a full refund, and it really doesn’t warrant a full refund, ask them to return everything by mail to receive a refund.

3. Block their User ID
There are some bad eggs out there, these customers expect the moon and are not happy with any of our attempts to sate them, and unfortunately they will be blocked from ever buying from us again.

To block a buyer, all you have to do is copy their user ID and paste it into the bidder block list.  You can block up to 5000 User IDs.  To remove members from the blocked list, select the members’ user ids and delete them. Remember to inform the members so they can resume bidding on your items.

For more information about blocking user IDs click here.