i am new to selling on ebay, and it's such a giant pain that i probably won't do it again. in any case, here is my dilemma.
i sold a pair of shoes to a bidder on 10/20. she never responded to my invoice for payment or my very polite follow-up e-mail. so i left a negative feedback just saying "buyer did not pay for item or respond to e-mails." and opened up a non-paying bidder dispute in ebay so that i could relist my item after the 7 days.
lo and behold, today (10/28), the day after the dispute is opened, the buyer e-mails me to say that she lives in miami and was without power because of hurricane wilma. which is fine, except that she won the item on 10/20 and i invoiced her on 10/20. didn't the hurricane hit on 10/25?
she asked if i would still accept her paypal payment. i said "of course" and wished her well and was very nice. then she wrote back and said "please remove the negative feedback" and i noticed that she had put a follow-up to my negative feedback saying "power down because we were hit by hurricane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
um, ok. fine.
so i realized that i can't change my feedback score i gave her...is there something else i can do? she says she is going to paypal me on monday when her bank reopens (so that will be 11 days after she won the auction, my auction specifies 3 days for payment).
if i do "mutually retract" feedback, does that mean that i don't get another chance to leave a feedback about her, in case she screws up further by not paying me or whatever?
thanks, lynnie. i guess that's probably the right thing to do. i don't want to start a pissing match with her and i don't want to hurt her feedback score either, but i kind of resent that she is using the hurricane excuse for something that isn't really applicable. there are enough people who have had terrible outcomes form the hurricane, you know? she coudl have e-mailed me any time in the 5 days before it hit and i would have been totally understanding. even now i'm being understanding, but i feel like she's taking advantage.
Eh, welcome to eBay selling. Unless you want to risk a neg there's not much you can do. It sucks that she's using an obviously illegitimate excuse but I've found with eBay the best strategy is avoiding trouble, at all costs. I'd also recommend telling her you'll retract as soon as she pays. Also, double check that you can still leave FB - if not, def. wait til she pays.
I sold shoes on eBay recently and AFTER the auction ended the high bidder informed me I was charging too much for shipping and they weren't going to pay it (shipping cost was on the auction). There are too many yahoos on eBay, imo.
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I see your response to my negative feedback, which explains what happened. I understand now that I can't take away my negative feedback (I'm new to selling on ebay) but I don't want to hurt your rating. I would like to just do a "mutual retraction" of feedback when the transaction has been completed (after I have been paid and you have received your shoes). Would that be ok for you? That seems to be the fairest thing for both of us.
I think that is complete fair. And if at the end of this something else happens, I think you can leave ANOTHER response that the auction ended 5 days before the hurricane hit or something like that - so that people will realize you aren't just being insensitive.
I really hate this for you. I have a rating of over 140 & have had one kinda pissy buyer, but other than that I've had no problems at all. It's stuff like this that gives ebay a bad name & makes people hate to sell there.
So sorry!
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