Manners (lack of)

[*maetrix*]

Just wondering whether anyone else on ebay - sellers & buyers - have noticed a lack of manners in communication recently?

Had a poor experience from a seller last week - the item arrived broken (in bits) to which his reply was "what am I supposed to do & return it at your own cost"..followed by wishing me "good luck with getting ebay to sort it out"  (they did within the hour)....THEN today a buyer bluntly messaging me "want it by Tuesday or i'll send it back"...no please or thankyou...2024 folks,where manners seem to be a thing of the past...these are just a couple of recent examples but it seems to becoming more frequent.

[selective_distribution]

Thank you 😀. So long as you don`t want any more photos!

[messier44000]

Once had a guy bluntly messaging about products with no manners , 

please or thank you.

Turned out to be a great guy who bought a few times.

It was just his way of comunicating.

A bit like Harry Enfield - Yorksire man. For those who have seen the clip on YT.

[fribblecollectables]

Ha ha! Literally today had this, customer quoted word for word:

Customer (after winning item at auction) "Show me photos of the inside"

Me - guided him to look at picture seven of the finished auction which showed the interior of the pot.

Customer - "not what I want. Cancel it"

[eastern-lights]

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@fribblecollectables wrote:

Ha ha! Literally today had this, customer quoted word for word:

Customer (after winning item at auction) "Show me photos of the inside"

Me - guided him to look at picture seven of the finished auction which showed the interior of the pot.

Customer - "not what I want. Cancel it"

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Will you wait four days before doing so?

[fribblecollectables]

Oh yes, most certainly !! 😁

[colinscity]

I've had 2 extremely unpleasant experiences on eBay years apart but the common demoninator in it was that i was buying a laptop, in 2016 i bought a laptop on eBay that was advertised as having 1TB storage and when it arrived it had 512GB but the storage was split in 2 separate places on the laptop so it would constantly run out of storage in one side and became a balancing act, the seller was so rude and obnoxious when i told her she scammed me, she even tried to pull the sympathy card and said her son was in hospital and sold his laptop which makes no sense as the UK has the NHS so she definitely wasn't selling it for pay medical bills, i just left it go and eventually bought a 256GB SD card on Amazon when i could no longer successfully balance the storage on the computer.

The second purchase was a lot more recent, November 2023 to be exact. I bought a 2009 17" Macbook on eBay, everything seemed fine and after purchasing it the seller decided to disconnect the battery which requires a philips head scredriver to open the back case which i didn't have, he sent photos and instructions on how to reconnect it but didn't bother to consult me first before doing it and didn't have the courtesy to include the screwdriver so i had to purchase one, thankfully after a lot of searching i found a very comprehensive screwdriver set on Amazon for 8 Euros. The seller was extremely rude, nasty and aggressive, he told me that i was the reason he decided not to sell on eBay anymore and to never contact him again, well as it turns out he used a fake SSD in the macbook, the information that it digitally provided was a SanDisk 1TB SSD but it had no official branding on the SSD and it completely failed when transferring 85GB of files to it, it failed about half way through causing the macbook to freeze and reboot a few times it ultimately froze and uninstalled the macOS and caused the Windows 10 partician to fail also which caused me to have to purchase another SSD. I have only now since Friday got it working again and have everything back to the way it was before it failed. 

I feel like this behaviour happens when people who are not well equipped in professional sales and customer communications sell one off items, there are so many people that sell one off items and there's no issues and they are actually quite friendly but then there are others who are just down right ignorant and rude, i've had a few people act repulsed by the thought of sending something from the UK to Ireland as if it's a distant land with no functioning postal service even when the UK was still in the EU too.

[tressygirl]

Don't know about the tin hat you are wearing :

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@superchallenge wrote:

I've had one guy demanding that I photograph EVERY page of brand new 42-page videogame manual "because I'm a collector" 

Or how about the guy who sent a demanding 2,400 word document (complete with hand-drawn diagrams) - I swear I'm not exaggerating - to show us how to "correctly" package the £50 item he had just purchased. The diagrams even told us how to tape the box, where to buy the exact boxes and tape.

 but you certainly deserve a (tin) star for putting up with ...  Photograph every page of your manual, and to be given instruction how to pack  your items  ( I do hope you heeded!!),  with diagrams one might add, full marks here for  the buyer's detail.

Bottom line is you're still here,   a Shining Example to all sellers who receive one usually admittedly undeserved negative,  and then say they're throwing in the towel, leaving eBay after decades of successful selling.

You have certainly provided the best examples of  the Awkward / Unreasonable buyer, doubt anyone can top that,  can they ?

[colinscity]

Oh something like that happened 2 years ago, I was selling my sister's iPhone and somebody bought it and wasn't paying for it so i sent them a reminder that if they wanted it before the weekend they can pay today and the person was extremely rude and aggressive (seems to be 2 common descriptive words for people i end up dealing with) and said 'don't want it now, cancel it' 

I remember many years ago on eBay where that would earn somebody a negative feedback, I remember seeing some people's feedbacks saying they bought and never paid or cancelled the item after a few days.

It really is disheartening to see the fall of humanity through eBay interactions haha

[hijiriishi-no-tsue]

I had one Buyer message me today telling me how I should pack my own items.

Needless to say I quickly cancelled their order  and refunded them, and I am never doing business with them again, bonus they left negative feedback saying I was "offended" when they blantantly where being very condescending and rude.

[yorkshire*flower]

unfortunately you probably wont be selling for long with that attitude. Cancelling a sale because someone asked you to pack a parcel in cardboard isnt rude and your reply on your FB certainly doesnt do you any favours, but now your FB is at 97.8% due to that neg and thats going to effect your future sales, so please bear this in mind, also cancelling a sale will also be flagged by ebays standards and if you do that too many times it could result in your a/c being compromised.You sometimes have to let those things go over your head and accept text/emails etc can often not be how the buyer intended it to be taken. 

Also you may want to consider changing your "about me" as telling prospective buyers that you set up this a/c as ebay kept nagging you to create an a/c and any lowballing and misuse of making offers wont be tollerated is not welcoming atall and with the negative fb you received and left another seller paints a picture for buyers.. If you have put "make offer" on a listing just set the parameters of entering the lowest amount for an auto accept and anything below will be dealt with by the bots and you wont receive any silly offers.

[hijiriishi-no-tsue]

Well thanks for advice, revamped a few things but I generally don't like dealing with rude people and letting them get away with it. I don't like enabling people like that especially if they tell me how I should do my job.

I have a low tolerance for certain behaviours and frankly, I'd rather lose a sale than bow down to some buyer making demands and thinking the person they're buying from is stupid.

[insidethe93]

"want it by Tuesday or I'll send it back" - you could say, using normal politeness which clearly the buyer lacks: "Thanks for your message. It should be with you by Tuesday [date a fortnight's time], assuming no delays caused by the carrier."

Then block them so they can't buy from you again, or at least not under that account.

[insidethe93]

"not got yet" - their keyboard, or more likely their brain, is missing the letters "h" and "i" ["hi"]  🙂

[insidethe93]

The answer to "£10?" should be "Yes please. Oh and if you want to buy the item as well then it costs [£original price] on top."

[yorkshire*flower]

Oh goodness you are in for a rough rise on Ebay if you dont like rude people but my advice would be to grow a thicker skin or (as I do) use AI to write my replies so I dont lose my temper and say something Id regret, I actually write in what I would like to say to people but it rewords it in a nice way 😉
I think if you take the attitude of not enabling them they do not learn and just become spiteful and you lose in the end (hence the neg) - it isnt about just the sale, I give you this advice after 20yrs selling on Ebay (this login isnt my business login) but negatives are how ppl take revenge and they will really hurt if you are not selling that many as its a % and then your listings are "hidden" by ebays algorithms.  

[pillarboxred]

Sending a clear photo to the damage, at least one, is essential. Do you really think we can believe every unsupported claim we receive? 

[pillarboxred]

You are quite right that opening a "not as described case" is the first step but enclosing evidence such as a photograph is essential. 

[*knight-rider*]

These attitudes are the very reason i don't communicate with sellers anymore if i have an issue, because it's always the same, they can't do enough till they get your money, then it just goes downhill if there are issues.

As far as that buyer goes, i would have sent an invoice including special next day delivery and if they moaned, i would have cancelled the sale there and then!

Self entitlement has no place with me 😉