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eBay: Poor Customer Service = Poor Value? Is it worth it?

eBay have a reputation for poor customer service. Ask them a question and they merely copy and paste something from the help pages which may or may not relate to the question you asked. Complain and they ignore you, close your account and they don’t care – a new seller will be along soon.

Yes, they get buyers to their website but with eBay’s appalling customer service and their I don’t care attitude does it really represent good value for money?

I had a few difficult “buyers” recently. I’m not complaining about them. Online or in a shop, there will always be cheats and thieves: a sad part of doing business in Britain.  Sure you should have polices in place to avoid these people as much as possible but don’t treat everyone as if they are out to rip you off – it should not be a race to the bottom. A business should NEVER be run to the lowest common denominator: a mistake many eBayers make.

I believe the majority of people are honest and want to enter into a transaction of mutual benefit and appreciation. Supply a good product, appreciate their custom, offer a good service and the customer will reciprocate.

In these difficult economic times, just like consumers, businesses need to spend their money wisely, making every pound work hard for them. When problems arise and eBay give their usual I don’t care attitude I  stop and wonder what am I paying them for? Hundreds of pounds a month for that? Is that really good value?

After all, I am paying their wages, those eBay employees who copy and paste nonsense, who take no pride in their work and give completely contradictory answers delivered in their usual I don’t care way. Is this a wise way to spend my money?

I have to conclude the answer is no. I wouldn’t expect consumers to put up with that, so I will close my eBay shop. With the new allgiftsdirect Magento website up and running it makes more sense to invest in that.

 

If you’re looking to improve your customer service skills, Click Here!

3 Reasons not to shop online

Top 3 reasons I refuse to do business with some companies:

  • Lying: when the trust goes my custom goes with it.

Real example: after buying from a company I received an email to say sorry but they are unable to supply due to flooding and damaged goods. I noticed the items were still advertised but at a higher price. Using a different ID  I enquired if the items were available. Yes, they had plenty of stock at the newly advertised higher price. I went elsewhere.

  • Sending something else – without asking first.

Not even an explanation: due to being discontinued we have substituted this item with… That is annoying enough but simply sending something different without any explanation is so frustrating and enough to make me go elsewhere. I know what I want so if you don’t have it please at least let me know. I went elsewhere.

  • Slow Delivery – As long as you tell me.

On its own, not a reason not to shop – if more time is needed I can cope with that. As long as you tell me.

I hope listing them here helps you avoid them.

  • be honest
  • keep people informed

Simple yet why do so many business fail to do this? Do you?

NB: if you are looking for examples of what type of language to use to communicate difficult situations check out this article about professional languagee.

 

In addition please ensure your customer service skills are top notch.

Google Base no longer works with eBay shops

Google no longer accept ebay feeds or ebay items on google shopping from individual sellers.

If your google base account displays ‘disapproved‘ there is nothing you can do.

Google stopped submission to ensure listings were not duplicated. Only the feed provided by eBay is accepted.

How to fix ebay shops and google base feeds.

I wrote earlier about using eBay RSS feeds to automatically update google shopping products. This no longer works due to an error with eBay’s coding.  Google now require the condition to be specified (new/used/refurbished) but eBay does not send this in the correct format so updating automatically from feeds no longer works.  Ebay are using the <condition> tag which applies to text files rather than the <g:condition> tag which applies to feeds.

You now need to upload to google base manually.  Go to the webage where your feed is located (as detailed in the previous article), for example mine is:

http://esssl.ebay.co.uk/GetListings/allgiftsdirect?fmt=g

Save the page from your browser and then open it for editing, wordpad will do fine. Simply find and replace all instances of <condition> with <g:condition> and all instances of </condition> with </g:condition>.

Save the file and upload it to google base.

Alternatively there are websites where you enter your feed web address, they alter the code for you and then allow you to save the file to upload to base:

UK site builder is one example I have tried and it works.

Perhaps one day eBay will fix their code so we can all go back to doing it automatically. Is this not what we pay our fees for?

Need to use eBay UK new shop display with Google base?

Ebay’s shop display has been updated. From the old 2 item gallery display:

Now you can change to a new 3 item grid layout, shown below. I rather like it. It is cleaner and clearer but there is a problem…

It no longer works with Google Base Store Connector. For sellers who rely upon sales from Google searches this could be a major problem.

But there is a way around it! Instead of using the Google base connector not only can you make use of ebay’s XML feed (included with every shop) you can also schedule it to update automatically.

1. Register a google-base data-feed-file with the name: yourstorename.xml
2. Click on the “Settings” tab in your google-base account;
3. Under “Website URL (Optional)”, replace the existing URL with your store’s XML link generated by eBay. The link should look like this:

http://esssl.ebay.co.uk/GetListings/YOURSTORENAME?fmt=g

4. Click “Save Changes” to confirm your changes;
5. Click the “Data feeds” link on the “My Items” tab;

NB:if you do not have a data feed already set up, which is likely if you have been using google store connector, then you will need to supply a file name. Use yourstorename.xml

6. Click “edit” next to “schedule” beside your “data feed”;
7. Under “URL of file,” replace the existing URL with the ebay generated link as mentioned in step (2) above;
8. Click “Update Schedule” to confirm your changes;
9. Your data feed will be automatically submitted in the correct format, next time and onwards, per your schedule.

Opt in to your new shop display via my ebay, manage my shop, preview new experience. Your listing feed can be found on the manage shop page under marketing tools, listing feeds.

This is not a new feature but using it will really help your store since these changes. Instructions modified to ebay UK from those originally posted at http://celebird.blogspot.com/2008/09/ebay-google-base-feeds.html

Changes to eBay UK

There are currently many changes affecting sellers on eBay. This includes:

  • Fee structure. There is a reduction in insertion fees and a hefty increase in final value fee. Some volume sellers will get discounts off the final value fee but only very large business will receive significant reductions in their fees. This fee structure is in place, discounts will appear on Aprils invoice for March listings.
  • Sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers. This is to stop retaliatory feedback and, eBay hope, will give buyers the opportunity to leave honest feedback for a transaction without fear. Due to begin in May. I think this fear is over emphasised, do people really worry about a red dot on a computer screen? Negative feedback may affect sellers (is the jury not still out on this one?) but how many sellers read buyers feedback? There are many voicing concern over this change but as I do not think feedback is important to buyers I don’t consider the change to be radical or much cause for concern.
  • Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) will determine if you receive a discount on your eBay fees and how high you are placed in their listing visibility. Under 4.5 in any category and you will not receive a discount and under 4.3 you will be placed at the bottom of listing visibility. These numbers could change at any time.

I have already changed to auto feedback when people pay. Thinking about it I should have done it ages ago, after all, a little trust can go a long way. After reading Seth Godin’s article on the honour system I am convinced it is the right decision.

Feedback, fees and others small things are always liable to change. Rising costs are, unfortunately, nothing new. The most important change is those little DSR stars. I have began to implement Channel Advisor’s advice on how to improve DSR rating that can be found summarised on Tamebay.

I don’t pretend to have any easy answers but, after I was feeling somewhat demotivated since the Christmas break, I find the changes on eBay has rekindled my interest in selling there . I’ll let you know how I get on.