Ebay Sellers:  How to handle Ebay Customer Service Emails

Selling on Ebay offers a fast pace sales opportunity for anyone that wants to sell online.  Turning Ebay selling from a hobby into a full time business is a big task.  One aspect of the work that must be completed in an Ebay business is the customer service.  Most of the customer service is handled through the email.

It is always important when selling regularly to make sure your terms of sale and after the sale is listed on all the auction pages.  By spelling out the way that you will handle returns, damages, and defective items you will avoid a lot of personal involvement and maintain a professional atmosphere with your customer.  Doing this is part of the building block for a stable and steady customer service department that will be manageable. 

The reality of business in general is that you are not going to make every single customer happy.  Somewhere along the line something will get damaged or lost in shipment.  The customer doesn’t know how to use an item.  He changed his mind after he received it and is having buyer’s remorse.  You also have to be aware that some Ebay buyers try to negotiate the price down after they receive to get a further discount by dishonest means and using Ebay negative feedback threats if you don’t give them a deal. 

The other part of the Ebay email is the pre sales questions that buyers ask more questions about the item.  We found that many times they want you to promise more than what a product can do in order to have some way to get a full refund with return shipping charges.  We found that we do not answer anything about how well something will work.  We will state information such as warranty if there is any or not, if the item is new or used, and manufacturer printed specifications.  Other than that we do not answer questions how well it would work to do a certain type of job.  Many times this is a user issue and preference.  If anything under sell the item to discourage these buyers, they usually end up on the unhappy return the item customer or the ones that want a discount after the fact.   

The reality is that these sad parts of the ebay selling business will happen again and again.  To try to make the process better for the seller it is really important to have an arsenal of email information ready for replying to these customers.