What to do When Your eBay Buyer Has a Complaint
Everyone hopes that they will be able to sell successfully without the buyer having any complaint, but in reality, there may come a time when something goes wrong - at least from your buyer’s perspective - and you will have to be the one to sort it out.
How you do this will depend partly on the problem, but one thing that will greatly help you out is to write out a resolution plan before the problem even occurs.
It is advisable to do it beforehand, because you will not be emotionally involved and you’ll be able to draft out a resolution that moves the buyer towards your goal of a successful sale.
When you have just received an email that may be accusatory and angry, your first reaction is to say something nasty back. This won’t help to resolve the problem, but if you have the resolution email already drafted, you’ll be able to send it off with a click of your mouse and tempers will be smoothed instead of ruffled.
It will also help to preserve your reputation as a seller if you can reply without becoming emotionally involved.
This Resolution Plan can be indicated in your listings. It will help your customers and give them confidence in you if they can see that fair and reasonable dealings have been decided upon upfront.
It also makes it harder for a complaint to be legitimate later on, if all your policies are in plain view of them as they buy.
To find out what you should say in your resolution Plan, you can go to various discussion boards, other sellers or eBay® itself and just change the wording slightly to make it a good fit with what you are selling.
Use similar terms and conditions that used by sellers you respect. These will include terms, return policies and guarantees that have been proven to work for them over a number of years.
Drafting a Resolution Plan in the beginning of your selling venture will not only help you resolve that complaint more quickly, but it will reduce the number of complaints by showing the customer what he should expect.
Your customer will have more faith in you and be more likely to give you good feedback, something that will enhance your reputation. It is important to seek quick settlement of a dispute, because eBay’s® policy is that it must be settled within 60 days.