Store suspended advise please

Iwillnotbeintimidated

After an altercation with a buyer today my store has been suspended.

I just need some advise so will give you the details now….

A buyer requested a quote for an order containing a bulky item this morning. I gave the quote for small parcel signed for (as I only post signed for). She paid and then queried why my postage was high. I explained that I only post via signed for mail and that if she is unhappy I will refund.

She replies that she only wants to pay for standard post ( as I am covered by Royal Mail…not true). So I refunded her not even passing on the PayPal fees that PayPal don’t refund me.

She then goes mad saying she did not want a refund she did not want to pay the postage via the method I use. Side note:It is clearly stated on my about me home page. She says she will make sure not to use me again…I had already blocked her as clearly she does not want the service I provide.

She leaves me a negative feedback to be vindictive and I respond to it.

I messaged her, annoyed I admit saying that how mean she is doing that when this all started with her paying for an order total she was not happy with. I told her I had blocked her anyway.

I emailed brick owl alerting them of the feedback issue, no response.

I have now received an email saying I am suspended for the way I communicated with the buyer.

I have no idea what to do now.Brick owl have asked me to email them a plan of what happened and how to rectify it. However is the buyer not at fault at all?

Do brick owl want me to close my store? They are not responding to emails. I have buyers asking when my store will reopen, what do I tell them.

Many thanks for reading this long winded tale….any advise appreciated of how to proceed.

Hoddie

Some people are just not capable of functioning in society without pissing people off along the way. You should be perfectly entitled to use only those shipping methods that you want to use, and so long as you were clear and up front about that, and they paid before questioning it, that should be the end of it.

Where you went wrong was cancelling the order - after taking their money you are breaking the sales contract and potentially the law of the buyer's country, so they probably felt justified leaving negative feedback. Also, insulting a buyer is never a good idea, though we're all human and many of us will have said things we later regret for one reason or another.

Easier said than done but ideally you should sit on your hands for a bit before sending an email you wrote while angry or annoyed. it's not something I'm always able to do!

BO tend to be pretty strict about standing behind who they feel is the party in the right, so it wouldn't hurt if you apologise and commit to not repeating this behaviour in future (cancelling without the buyer's agreement and/or being abusive to other users).

Jay37

I agree with @Hoddie as a process to follow. As a side note for moving forward (and apologies if they are missing because of the store suspension), but could you not set up automatic shipping bands which cover your Signed For costs? If these were set up in advance a) customers would be able to see straight away what you charge, and b) you wouldn't have to spend time sorting quotes. For example, if you were going to ship a Small Parcel at 2nd Class Signed, I can see from my current Royal Mail leaflet that is £4.69, and no doubt you'd add a little extra for packaging, etc, so £5 then wouldn't seem out of place. This would go some way to adding the clarity that @Hoddie mentions in their first paragraph, and the customer would see this immediately on the catalogue page and during checkout. They may not like the amount, but at least it wouldn't come as a potential surprise.

Iwillnotbeintimidated

Hi thanks for the replies. I have the auto set up but as with the bulky items I found in the past asking the buyer to select the right service was a problem so on bulky items I chose request a quote. Then when quoting i tell them it’s via recorded mail so they fully understand the charges.

Iwillnotbeintimidated

I truly thought by issuing her a full refund as she was unhappy with the quote after she weirdly paid for it anyway…I thought I was being helpful. Clearly I was wrong. Unfortunately no one responds at brick owl to my emails. So no idea what to do next. Do I cancel orders I am processing?

Jay37

"Do I cancel orders I am processing?"

I assume you mean orders that were in progress prior to suspension? I'd carry on with those as normal - those customers should (?) still see them as active on their order screen.

I've found admin to be helpful when I've needed to contact them. It's possible that they cannot reply straight away at present, or maybe they're waiting for the action plan? Not overly helpful, I'm afraid, but maybe there are other stores out there who've been in your position who can better advise on processes/timescales...

Iwillnotbeintimidated

Yes the order was one I was processing before. I will go ahead with that then. Thankyou

I have no idea on an action plan as apart from a testy message, feel (or I thought) I acted in the best interests of a buyer who did not want to use my services I provide. Maybe she wanted to claim non receipt hence not wanting to have a signed for method and I upset her plans…who knows… but I won’t apologise for giving a full refund to a buyer who did not like my service. Am just amazed that admin cannot see that I was acting on good intentions trying to appease a nightmare customer…

Hoddie

Offering to cancel the order would have been the right thing to do, rather than just doing that. Look, whatever action you take when someone's annoyed has the possibility of annoying them further. Sometimes you just can't win! If you wish to speak to admin then email is the way to do it, but rather than asking questions, just explain you think you understand where you went wrong and will endeavour not to do it again.

Iwillnotbeintimidated

Update. Brick owl admin have been so extremely unhelpful. Going round in circles repeating same blurb. As I will not apologise to a psycho buyer. She has even been getting other members she knows to contact me. Bullying is allowed it seems if you are a buyer.

As Lawrence won’t help and or tell me how to stop this. I have deleted all my stock…now it will stop. 20k of listed stock it hurt to hit delete but I won’t be bullied or pressured into things.

Adios

Calibrick

@Iwillnotbeintimidated , Hoddie has given you incredible advice. I've never been suspended, but I imagine there is a form response you have to provide for your action plan? As he or she suggested, simply noting that after chatting in the forum, you now understand what went wrong and have amended your business process to avoid it in the future (then in the future, offer to cancel.

Since we're all in customer service, we all get the opportunity to interact with all sorts of different LEGO lovers. The vast majority are awesome and super-nice people! Occasionally, some are less nice - perhaps they had a bad day or are just kind of a PITA kind of person. For every one of the less-nice you'll have the opportunity here to work with thousands of amazing people! :-)

I have observed here over the years that BO admin is VERY firm on proper handling of issue reports and suspension. I do not believe there is any or much dialogue beyond the action plan - I do respectfully recommend you just do it, learn from it, and move on. :-)

Trying to see both sides here, I think in admin's shoes, I would likely handle exactly as he does: as a small business, you can't really afford to get into back and forths/rights and wrongs discussions with sellers and buyers. You'd literally only do that all day, and from a BO POV, BOTH of you are the customer. :-) So a customer complained, and admin is following their established process without fear or favor. There are likely potential legal consequences for BO involved also, so they have to stay very unbiased. Though I've seen that can be frustrating for some sellers (and do get it), my observation is just do the action plan, chg and learn from it for the future, and call it good! :-)

I would certainly not let that put you off of BO - truly, I left BL in 2017 (and I used to buy a LOT over there before I became a seller) because of all the crazy there (Brickarms, et al). I have NEVER regretted moving here, not for a second. For other issues, truly, admin is wildly communicative - among the best. And they truly listen to their sellers about improvements and the like.

Your presence here makes BO better - I truly think if you can move past this, you won't regret it. :-)

jimbo23uk

being one of the oldies i have been a member since soon after brickowl started not often i comment but come on this just a load nandy pandy bollocks ,what strange attitudes the owners of this take ,everybody should remember no sellers no store ,be carefully even big stores who thought they were invincible have gone down the pan ,give sellers respect

tons_of_bricks

Ok, if what the seller says is 100% accurate, I find it alarming. The admin should have at least given the seller one warning before suspension. Now maybe we aren't seeing the whole story, but to suspend a store simply because of one rash message is drastic. If the seller has a pattern of sending such messages, then I seen reason for suspension. But this situation looks like the admin overreached.