Lesson Learned As A Seller

One of the guys at my local stamp club who is also a ebay seller is really angry over a negative feedback he received .
He sold a lot which was described as 500 British Commonwealth for xx amount of money . He packed it up to ship and decided he had some stuff that he could not sell . He decided to put in a FREE lot of hundreds of CTO DDR stamps with the British for free .
He received a negative feedback with a explanation on ebay ,that half the lot was worthless Germany stamps .
He has been too angry to explain it to the unhappy buyer . I told him the mistake was not writing a note to explain the freebie . The second thing was the type of people your dealing with as buyers . They never did check the count to see that he got his purchase correct ,all he seen was 1/2 DDR stamps ,that is the level of some buyers .
I am interested on how you would handle this both with ebay and the buyer .

I think you are 100% correct that the mistake was not including a note with the freebies.

That being said, I have never and would never send DDR or Eastern European CTOs as bonus to a buyer. Sometimes I send freebies, but they are always from the area that the buyer collects. And, I always write "extras" on the glassine.

I would be annoyed if a seller unloaded worthless material on me, even if it was free. Free does not necessarily equal wanted.

At the least, the seller should have marked them as "bonus".

Robert

Your friend can contact the buyer and explain the situation and then request the buyer to modify his feedback. Here's what ebay says;

Feedback can become a permanent part of a seller's record, so as a courtesy, we suggest that you contact a seller to resolve any issues before leaving feedback that's neutral or negative.
If you left neutral or negative feedback but the seller has since resolved the issue, they can send you a request to revise your feedback. You'll then have 10 days to change or remove your feedback before the request expires.
Make sure your comments are fair, factual, and relate to the order that prompted the feedback request. Keep in mind that we don't allow abusive or profane language. See our member-to-member contact policy for details

And really, if a seller sent me a bunch of CTO DDR stamps I would not be happy (though after verifying I got what I ordered I would still leave positive feedback). That is not a practice I would recommend. It's just more stuff I have to deal with, even if it would be as simple as tossing it in the recycle bin.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Negative feedback on ebay is worthless unless the seller creates a pattern of repeated issues leading to multiple negatives. Only then some buyers may back away. Even so, sellers like Matthijs Philatelie have literally thousands of negative feedbacks but I don't see that reality hurting their business even a little bit.

I know it's hard- but in business it is always a best practice to approach challenges as unemotionally as possible, and to facilitate rational outcomes. Floortrader said it right in the title of his post- "lesson learned." Next time send a note about the freebies and try to never look back.

I disagree. There will always be some buyers who won't buy from a seller whose feedback is below 100 percent, or who has a recent negative feedback. Adding a response to the negative feedback in the ebay feedback system, if you can, should be helpful.

While true, it is unfortunate that ebay marketing has succeeded in brainwashing buyers into thinking this. If people would think for themselves they would realize that a seller cannot possibly have thousands and thousands of transactions without a few unhappy (rightfully or wrongfully) customers. I am not even sure that any delivery service can ship thousands of items without at least some going missing in action.

I am reminded of a local TV commercial for a cancer center here in the US where they tout a '94% satisfaction rating from previous patients'. Wouldn't most any cancer patient who survives be assumed to be 'satisfied' by definition? The unsatisfied patients probably are not around to participate in their surveys.
Don

A reasonable response does it for me in canceling out the negative.

I agree with Trainwreck...free does not necessarily equal wanted...i had a similar experience when I purchased some French stamps and the seller included a bunch of Canadian stamps all used, same denomination and worthless. However not worthy of a negative feedback...obviously the buyer did not check the packet he purchased.

I keep a large shoe box on the top shelf of a closet, things like the DDR cheapies referred to usually get tossed in there. when it becomes over half full, I donate the contents, either to my local club or to one of the stamps for kids groups advertising in Linn's. The buyer in this story clearly did not look past the stamps he didn't like or want and realize he got what he'd paid for. You don't use customers to unload unwanted material.

A couple years back I bought a decent used hingeless album from a vendor in Germany. He sent a large package with my purchase and a collection in an old Schaubek album that smelled like a damp basement. It appeared to be something he couldn't get rid of any other way so he sent it to me for an 'offer'. The upshot was he got a small payment from me just to conclude the matter and I also blocked him. Not good business practice.

I think that when it comes to stamp collecting, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I, like many stamp collectors, have recently become very interested in the topical side of my collection. What started as one or two topical interests, has now mushroomed into 5 or 6 topical areas of interest.

That being said, if I were to receive a packet of CTOs, Iron Curtain stamps or Dunes, I would immediately sort out those which fit into my topical areas, feeling wonderfully enriched and then use the others to trade or auction off at my local stamp club meetings.

But ... that's just me. ebay opens you up to a whole new world of buyer sentiments, often not as hospitable as we would hope for. What I have learned, the hard way, is that MORE information, even if it seems counter-intuitive, is always a better policy than taking action without some kind of written communication to the buyer. In this case, I agree with most posters here that a big, flashing neon billboard promoting the DDR stamps as either "free" or "bonus" might have helped prevent a misunderstanding.

No note has caused me grief also!

Not sure you can prove this to ebay sadly.

The cartels have 1000s of positive feedbacks and several 100% feedback history.... That's when I lost trust in the ebay feedback system.

These days I read the negative feedbacks on new sellers and try to see if its a genuine negative or some moron venting himself.

On the usual sellers, I don't even read what it says anymore