- I don't like having to send shipping notices. I send them right after I have generated a PayPal label, and I know that PayPal just sent a shipping notice. As a buyer, I delete all shipping notices whether sent by the seller or by PayPal. So as a seller, I dislike having to send them, since I know some buyers (**me**) absolutely hate the unnecessary messages. I have to send the messages in order to avoid low DSRs from the buyers who happen to like receiving all of the extra messages.
- When I click to send a shipping message to a buyer, the title of the message is so darned long! Example: "the.bgs has sent a question about item #260633628516, that ended on Jul-15-10 21:55:14 PDT - Nancy Drew #20 Clue in Jewel Box Applewood Original DJ." What?! Why does the title contain every piece of data imaginable about the item? Sometimes I delete everything up to the beginning of the item number and then take out everything between the comma and the hyphen. More recently, I have deleted everything and simply retitled my message "Shipping Notice."
- I prefer to send my shipping notices after I have generated the shipping label. Unless I stay on the same screen in My eBay, the item has been removed from the list of items needing to be shipped and placed in with the rest. I nearly sent a shipping notice to someone who had not paid! Therefore, I am trying to remember to send the shipping notices before I generate the labels.
- I cannot display accurate shipping information for both domestic and international transactions. EBay does not allow for me to charge a handling fee for domestic transactions when I elect to ship internationally. The only way for calculated shipping to be correct for domestic (media mail) is to raise the weight of the package to around four to five pounds above the actual weight, which makes the calculated shipping for international to be way above the correct amount. The only way shipping can be correct for both is for flat rate shipping, but I cannot use that option when I need to charge above $4.00 for domestic.
- I easily end up with mistakes on eBay's unwieldy Sell Your Item form. I'll spare you the details on why I end up with errors, but it is very annoying. I have to revise the listings when errors occur, and then I risk having the items removed from search, not to be indexed until hours later.
- EBay has no place to print a simple packing slip or invoice from within My eBay. Users must go to PayPal for a simple packing slip. The "order details" page could be used, but that page has extra stuff on it, such as an ad at the top of the page. Does eBay need money so badly that ads are necessary on the majority of pages?
- When a buyer asks a question after a listing has closed, eBay removes all identifying information about the listing from the message. The message's title is the short and unhelpful "--- has sent a message." This is the extreme opposite of the messages with the long titles.
I received a question from a buyer after one of my listings had closed, and the buyer asked whether I would relist the book. I had no idea which book the buyer meant since eBay stripped all identifying information from the message. I had to ask the buyer to clarify. Does eBay want to make communication hard for buyers and sellers? It sure seems so.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
eBay Selling Rants!
My rants are complaints about using eBay!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
My only rant, as of recent, is that I sold $7.22 on eBay and I have a current account balance owed of $0.65. I sold a $49 and some change transaction on Bonanzle, and my fees owed are $1. Comparable? Not at all. No, thanks, Ebay. The only positive is that those buyer of my small sales will get a 10% off coupon for my booth at Bonanzle, and even if they don't but from me, hopefully, they will at least log on and check it out!
*buyers
It's all too complicated and too much work for me. I still use hand-printed shipping labels, don't 'generate' eBay/Paypal ones, and I send a self-generated email to the buyer about shipping. If a buyer doesn't like it, tough balloons. It doesn't seem to harm my DSRs, but then I don't give two hoots about those idiotic things. Anyone who really pays any attention to eBay's lopsided feedback system is an idiot. How can anyone take it seriously when buyers can give a negative rating and sellers can't? That's right out of Stupidity 101.
Sometimes when I buy a book, I get four or more emails from the seller - all those eBay/Paypal-generated ones. I delete them as if they are spam. Last time I looked my DSRs were all 4.9 and my feedback 100% (negs only stay on for a year now), so I guess no one really cares much if I send 49 emails for each sale.
EBay comes up with some really stupid stuff!
Mike
I wish I knew what the average buyer prefers regarding communication. In your case, your buyers are receiving only one message, which is a personal one, about shipping. I'm not surprised that you have high ratings.
I hate all the stupid messages I receive about shipping, but I never leave the sellers low DSRs for communication. I know why they send the messages. Even if a seller does not communicate with me at all, I still leave all fives unless something bad happens with the transaction.
For some reason, I tend to have around 4.7 to 4.8 for the communication DSR. Part of my problem is that I have had other sellers of series books leave me all low ratings in order to hurt my averages. It has happened to me more than once, and that is all I will say.
I don't care about the ratings anymore, either, since I am selling on Bonanzle. I would prefer to keep them at least at 4.8 so that I can be guaranteed of being eligible for any future promotions. But as I have stated previously, if my ratings drop due to someone else trying to hurt me, I'll just go to a third ID for selling.
If you have not heard about John Donahoe's latest statements, you should know that he is planning to change the Best Match algorithm again. First, they suppressed auctions in favor of fixed-price. Next, they gave auctions a boost over fixed-price in Best Match. Now, they are going to give fixed-price a boost over auctions and also give a boost to high-priced items. How about changing eBay back to the way it was three years ago?
It should be noted that eBay.com's sales fell 4% during the 2nd quarter (eBay spun it as a 2% increase over one year ago in order to fool people). Amazon.com's sales rose 41% in the 2nd quarter. Ouch, ouch. We can see how well eBay's plan to compete with Amazon has worked.
Post a Comment