Neutral feedback or ding stars?

[Cheap_Tequila]

I purchased a wallet through ebay on the evening of March 25 and shortly after received an automated email message from the seller thanking me for the purchase and super fast payment. The email states "normally I ship within 24-48 hours upon receiving payment".
March 26, I get an email with the shipment details and tracking number. The package is being shipped via first class international (seller is in the US, I'm in Canada). I was under the impression that first class international tracking no longer updated on either USPS or Canada Post so after the initial status of "electronic shipping info received" showed up, I wasn't expecting to see another update. I messaged the seller to thank her for the fast shipping and that I'd let her know as soon as I receive it.

I was expecting the package to show up in the mail this week (2 weeks for first class from the US is the usual) and decided to check the tracking again and discovered that the tracking actually does update for this service. I was disappointed to discover that the seller just mailed the package out on April 8 (2 weeks after receiving cleared payment) so I messaged her to let her know I was unhappy about her not letting me know there was a delay in shipping. I would have been far more understanding had she taken a minute or two and messaged me after she finally mailed it to apologize for the shipping delay. Shortly after I messaged her, I get this: "Thank you for your purchase. Your communication is much appreciated. I just got out of the hospital recently so I forgot to inform you that my postal service return your mail so I reship it yesterday. I am truly sorry about the tremendous delay. I will be more than to reimburse your shipping fee. Thank you again for your patience. Kind regards, XXXX".

Funny thing is, several buyers who purchased items from this seller after me have already received their items and have left feedback so I'm not buying the "hospital" excuse. I responded with this: "I find it odd that the tracking doesn't indicate it was accepted and then returned to you prior to you shipping it out yesterday. I'm not sure what a hospital visit has to do with you not messaging me once you finally got the item shipped out almost 2 weeks late. A little honesty would go a long way here. Anyway...I appreciate your offer to refund me the shipping cost. I feel that would be the fair thing to do."
She never responded to my last message but I did receive a refund for the $5.30 shipping today. I realize I won't see the wallet for at least 2 weeks now but, providing it's as described when I do receive it, I'm not sure how I should deal with feedback. Do I leave positive feedback if I'm happy with it? Should I just ding stars for communication and shipping? If so, how many stars should she get?

 

[reneeluvscoach]

At least she replied to your message. If it really was returned, I'd be inclined to cut her some slack. If not, I'm guessing I'd probably give 4 stars for comms and maybe 2 or 3 for shipping.

 

[Riezky]

If everything's alright with the wallet I would leave a positive, since she did get back to you quickly and refund the shipping cost. I agree with renee on the star ratings if the seller did lie about the item being returned.

 

[BeenBurned]

Why oh why do buyers always want to punish a seller for a mistake? Are we all so perfect that we never err?

Sometimes sellers are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Whether she was in the hospital or not, I don't know and neither do you. And without seeing the tracking and what it says, I don't know whether it might have been mailed earlier and whether there may have been previous tracking. (You don't know that either since you admitted to not checking it until this week.) It very well may have been returned to her; the fact is that you don't know and are just assuming that she's lying.

She replied immediately to your message, offered to refund your shipping and although you complain that she didn't reply to your request for shipping refund, she did reimburse you.

I'm not sure what more you want from her.

As long as the wallet was accurately described, then you got exactly what you paid for. It may have been delivered a bit later than expected and hoped for but you'll have gotten it.

I would suggest that those who are always so quick to want to ding feedback and/or DSRs or to recommend dinging feedback walk a mile in a seller's shoes. As much as ebay wants its site to be otherwise, most ebay sellers are NOT large companies and don't have huge mail order businesses.

They have lives, families, jobs, obligations, etc. and sometimes, real life gets in the way of their ebay sales. But when they handles those slip-ups with grace and humility, I think they deserve a bit of slack.

Until buyers-only have sold on ebay and have seen how NOT easy it is, they should be a bit more tolerant.

 

[Nikki_]

I would suggest that those who are always so quick to want to ding feedback and/or DSRs or to recommend dinging feedback walk a mile in a seller's shoes. As much as ebay wants its site to be otherwise, most ebay sellers are NOT large companies and don't have huge mail order businesses.

They have lives, families, jobs, obligations, etc. and sometimes, real life gets in the way of their ebay sales. But when they handles those slip-ups with grace and humility, I think they deserve a bit of slack.

Until buyers-only have sold on ebay and have seen how NOT easy it is, they should be a bit more tolerant.

Well said, BB.

 

[Riezky]

I'm curious what you guys would think of this situation:

I needed a couple days to pay for an item, and immediately messaged the seller to let her know exactly when I'd have it paid for. I ended up paying earlier than the date I told her and messaged her again to thank her for waiting.

A couple days go by and I haven't heard anything from her, so I message again with basically "no rush, just wondering if you've had a chance to ship?". She replies that she's been busy with work and will ship the next day. The item is marked as shipped the next day, but no tracking.

So next is the hypothetical part: if she has indeed shipped it, then I would happily leave her positive fb and would not ding stars. Let's say she takes another couple days (more than one) to ship after marking it as shipped, and doesn't message me about it. If tracking showed this, I might consider 4 stars on communication/shipping - not because of the extra time, I can understand if she can't make it to the post office on weekdays, but for not simply telling me it would be a few more days. Do you think that would be too harsh, or warranted?

Sorry to hijack the thread, just thought it was similar and wanted to see what others thought.

 

[Cheap_Tequila]

Why oh why do buyers always want to punish a seller for a mistake? Are we all so perfect that we never err?

Please don't flame me for simply asking how to proceed. That's why I posted my question here.....because I wanted some advice as to how to be fair with the feedback.

Sometimes sellers are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Whether she was in the hospital or not, I don't know and neither do you. And without seeing the tracking and what it says, I don't know whether it might have been mailed earlier and whether there may have been previous tracking. (You don't know that either since you admitted to not checking it until this week.) It very well may have been returned to her; the fact is that you don't know and are just assuming that she's lying.

You're right, I don't know whether she was in the hospital or not. What I do know is that other buyers purchased items from her within the few days following my purchase and they have already received their items and left feedback. I did not admit that I didn't check the tracking until this week. I said I wasn't expecting to see an update in the tracking. I neglected to mention that I actually did continue to check almost daily up until this past Friday but because it hadn't updated, I didn't think it would. Had she mailed it during that time, I would have thought I would have seen something saying it had been accepted and or returned to the sender at some point.

She replied immediately to your message, offered to refund your shipping and although you complain that she didn't reply to your request for shipping refund, she did reimburse you.

I didn't complain that she didn't reply to my request as I never requested anything from her. She offered to refund the shipping cost and I accepted. I stated that she didn't reply to my saying that I found it odd the tracking never updated when it was supposedly shipped and then returned to her.

I'm not sure what more you want from her.

I don't recall asking anything more from her.

As long as the wallet was accurately described, then you got exactly what you paid for. It may have been delivered a bit later than expected and hoped for but you'll have gotten it.

That is what I'm hoping for. Yes, I was expecting to have it sometime around the 2 week mark after having paid for it. Now it'll be about a 4 week wait.

I would suggest that those who are always so quick to want to ding feedback and/or DSRs or to recommend dinging feedback walk a mile in a seller's shoes. As much as ebay wants its site to be otherwise, most ebay sellers are NOT large companies and don't have huge mail order businesses.

They have lives, families, jobs, obligations, etc. and sometimes, real life gets in the way of their ebay sales. But when they handles those slip-ups with grace and humility, I think they deserve a bit of slack.

Until buyers-only have sold on ebay and have seen how NOT easy it is, they should be a bit more tolerant.

I completely understand all this and, if you read my original post again, you'll see my complaint was not that there was a delay in shipping but that I was unhappy she didn't message me to let me know there was a delay in getting it out.... an almost 2 week delay. It would have taken her only a minute or two to message me. I would have been much happier had she shown some "grace and humility" by saying that she just messed up rather than saying something about getting out of the hospital recently (which could mean a number of things as it didn't seem to affect her ability to mail out packages to other buyers who purchased from her after I did).

I will definitely give her a positive if/when I receive it and it's NWT, as described. Should I be giving her 5 stars for communication and 5 stars for shipping because she refunded the $5.30 shipping cost? For the record, she's a long time (since 2005) ebay seller. She has an ebay store and currently has almost 200 items for sale. I just want to be fair.

 

[mrsinsyder]

I completely understand all this and, if you read my original post again, you'll see my complaint was not that there was a delay in shipping but that I was unhappy she didn't message me to let me know there was a delay in getting it out.... an almost 2 week delay. It would have taken her only a minute or two to message me. I would have been much happier had she shown some "grace and humility" by saying that she just messed up rather than saying something about getting out of the hospital recently (which could mean a number of things as it didn't seem to affect her ability to mail out packages to other buyers who purchased from her after I did).

I will definitely give her a positive if/when I receive it and it's NWT, as described. Should I be giving her 5 stars for communication and 5 stars for shipping because she refunded the $5.30 shipping cost? For the record, she's a long time (since 2005) ebay seller. She has an ebay store and currently has almost 200 items for sale. I just want to be fair.

I'm going through the same thing, and TBH, I agree with you. I'm primarily a seller on eBay and I operate within the guidelines I agreed to (and yes, I have a demanding FT job and go to grad school. I get it.) If something were to come up, I would just communicate that to my buyer and go from there.

My seller didn't ship my item for a week with no explanation. When I asked her if she had actually just shipped the item, she said that she had because she ran out, when in reality she listed a lot of the same item the day after my BIN ended. So I had been checking my mailbox everyday and the item was still sitting with her. Like OPs seller, mine didn't contact me until I reached out first.

Just because sellers are mostly normal people like you and I doesn't exclude them from common courtesy. More than doubling your promised shipping time with no communication is not good practice.

 

[Cheap_Tequila]

At least she replied to your message. If it really was returned, I'd be inclined to cut her some slack. If not, I'm guessing I'd probably give 4 stars for comms and maybe 2 or 3 for shipping.

If everything's alright with the wallet I would leave a positive, since she did get back to you quickly and refund the shipping cost. I agree with renee on the star ratings if the seller did lie about the item being returned.

Sounds fair to me. Maybe there'll be some markings/stamps on the package indicating it was accepted, returned and reshipped. If that's the case, I can forgive the shipping delay.

 

[threadbender]

You could always choose not to leave feedback.

 

[Cheap_Tequila]

Here's a screenshot of the tracking info.

 

[mrsinsyder]

Looks like she printed the label and never dropped it off.

 

[Cheap_Tequila]

You could always choose not to leave feedback.

I actually thought of that too but in order to try to keep the playing field fair to both buyers and sellers, I feel that all ebay users should leave feedback.

 

[Cheap_Tequila]

I'm going through the same thing, and TBH, I agree with you. I'm primarily a seller on eBay and I operate within the guidelines I agreed to (and yes, I have a demanding FT job and go to grad school. I get it.) If something were to come up, I would just communicate that to my buyer and go from there.

My seller didn't ship my item for a week with no explanation. When I asked her if she had actually just shipped the item, she said that she had because she ran out, when in reality she listed a lot of the same item the day after my BIN ended. So I had been checking my mailbox everyday and the item was still sitting with her. Like OPs seller, mine didn't contact me until I reached out first.

Just because sellers are mostly normal people like you and I doesn't exclude them from common courtesy. More than doubling your promised shipping time with no communication is not good practice.

Right. I would have been far less annoyed had she contacted me first.

Looks like she printed the label and never dropped it off.

Yup.

 

[rainnebeauxday]

What I would do, only because I feel for her if she actually was ill, is to tell her how disappointed you were (if you haven't already) in the late shipping and that next time she should drop an email to let the buyer know the item will be shipping out late (should she end up in the hospital again).

I don't think I would ding her if you feel that she was being honest. However, I would leave detailed feedback saying something like, " Seller had unexpected illness, item delayed. Item as promised. " If the item arrives and is as promised. Not sure how many characters Ebay allows in feedback, too.

This way if she tries to pull this again a buyer will have seen this and know it's BS. I don't rely on the % in feedback, I actually read the comments to determine if I want to buy from someone. I can't be the only one...