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feedback guidelines and expectations
Hi everybody! I'm new to the site and was looking for a description of the feedback policy both for stores and for buyers as well as general expectations for fulfilling orders here.
I placed my first order over a week ago and paid immediately although I have not received any feedback and my item only shipped today. The store has 100% positive feedback so I wanted to see if my expectations were unreasonable before I left neutral or negative feedback. In the past at other online sellers I would expect contact from a seller after payment within 24 hours and then if there was a delay in fulfilling the order i would expect a notification within say, three days. Is eight days a long time without an update or am I being impatient? If it matters, my order was very small and simple, only two minifigs and a single rare part.
Thanks,
I placed my first order over a week ago and paid immediately although I have not received any feedback and my item only shipped today. The store has 100% positive feedback so I wanted to see if my expectations were unreasonable before I left neutral or negative feedback. In the past at other online sellers I would expect contact from a seller after payment within 24 hours and then if there was a delay in fulfilling the order i would expect a notification within say, three days. Is eight days a long time without an update or am I being impatient? If it matters, my order was very small and simple, only two minifigs and a single rare part.
Thanks,
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Comments
A seller can be late according to his/her settings (2-5 days in this case), but that doesn't mean there can't be circumstances that can provoke such, like an overload of orders, family issues, sickness, etc.
The whole point is to look at the order when it arrives and see if complete and as described, if all is well, personally I wouldn't really be bothered by it, after all it's just a 3 days gap (in this case), but still shipped and it's not like it was a month or 6 weeks before shipping (I have a vivid example in mind on an other site, where the seller applied this method quite actively to avoid PP claims, just kept promissing and delaying and new promessing and more delaying orders and basicly holding his buyers hostage of their money). Late shipping never warrants a neutral or negative, unless the delay is unreasonably high, 8 days is still reasonable in my book.
@hoddie: the dispatch time isn't attached to an order, at least 2 times the past 14 mouths I switched from 2-5 towards 6-14 days for personal reasons (sometimes only for an extra day or 2), if a buyer looks at it prior to a purchase, but while it's paid but not packed the seller switches the disptach time to 'higher', then there is no proof.
It also may be that the seller had it on 6-14 days yesterday, has catched up and switched back today towards 2-5 days today and the OP checked it 'now'. So it's never a clear call if it's not attached to an order.
@Admin: might be good to have the dateframe attached to the orders at moment of purchase, that way it would show on the order overview and not be open for discussion 'afterwards'.
Eric
Additional, intermediary brackets of dispatch times could be nice. Personally, I could often use a bracket of 2-3 days.
And further: in my opinion: leaving a neutral or negative because a couple of days delay without trying to communicate with the seller would 100% be inappropriate.
communication is still the key, and will always be. YES! would love that to!
I will put it real nicely: I think it is a very, very bad update. Did I mention I think it is a very bad update? Only result from this update: Nobody gives an honest timeframe anymore, with topics like this as a result, and feedback nobody can respond to.
How on earth am I supposed to sell if nobody can see (thus buy) my items?
I said it before: I may only sound negative, but only because I want the site to work.
If I get an order in late Friday, and I can't get it out until Monday. I always feel like I am pushing that timeline. I know weekends shouldn't count, but some people will still say Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday--That's 4 days!
Would love a 2-3 days option.
Katie
Contact needs to have been made to leave negative feedback now according to recent site updates.
Personally I would have contacted you within my shipping dates and if I was in your shoes I would have contacted them.
Apparently Admin updated this 6-14 days thing just prior to my post, I'm guessing you had your store set to 6-14 (and now 2-5 ?)? Colcluding thos fromn your reaction.
I don't think it's fair either, I have set my store twice on that dateframe for personal reasons, doesn't mean I'm not keen on having orders during that time, I just want my buyers to expect a longer delay in such case. Sellers who have that time frame all the time are at disadvantage, allthough I do understand the idea behind it: expecting faster processing from all sellers and therefor buyers would have a better view on the site as a whole.
Maybe the 6-14 days should be splitted in 2 (6-10 and 11-14) as a compromise and leave items visible for sellers up to 10 days and not visible the ones above. In all honesty 10 days is quite a long time between payment and shipment, don't think I ever went over 7 days to ship an order the past 5 years (large orders with +3000 parts excluded) an generally only 2 or 3 days, larger lot counts up to 5 days.
Under normal circumstances I believe any seller should be able to ship in those timeframes, if a seller can't handle it, it's better to close store to catch up if loaded with orders or in worst case: not sell at all :P
And yes, sellers made aware of the non visibility of their items because of the 6-14 days setting will probably simply lie and set to 2-5 days, IMHO far worse then warning buyers on checkout + on the order overview of a possible longer processing time.
I fully agree a buyer should have an indication of a timeframe for processing, but only if 'on record', I have such in my BL invoices for example. Here a buyer can only rely on what the seller sets on his storefront, but if changed, there isn't a trace (except Admin maybe).
But it remains an indication, not an absolute truth, sellers can have unexpected circomstances causing delays, they may be (very) personal and the last thing a seller wants is to do on such moments is to give explantions to buyers, yes maybe a little 'sorry, unexpected delay' is in place, either during the waiting period, either on a note with the order, but even if none, a neutral for an extra day or 2 (or 3) might be received quite negatively depending on what the seller experianced (and as a buyer you are clueless). Personally I would never leave a neutral for such (as long as the delay is reasonable, not talking 2-3-4 weeks here). If you expect this from all sellers all the time, make sure you can live up to it as well, but rest assured that sooner or later, any seller will experiance a bad moment.
I bet there are some sellers that are really wondering what happened to their sales in the next couple of days, simply because they are honest about their timeframe, and don't read the forum. maybe they even have those 10.000 pieces of 3001's in black you want so badly. To bad you can't see them because the seller is abroad for some days.
My god are we living in an impatient time, where sellers that don't GUARANTEE shipment within 5 days are not even allowed to sell....
In any case, I don't really want to argue about this. I think the OP is well within his rights to query what the hell this particular store was playing at. That said, I agree that the recent change is probably a little OTT.
Instead, make it very clear that this store is experiencing bigger delays. Put an information box in the cart page, put a warning when checking out, even a banner on every page if you must... but don't hide the store!!
I did think about adding a blog post to the storefront updating buyers. I also wondered whether it would be possible to send a one-shot email to all buyers rather than individual messages. You do then however run the risk of buyers getting over-run with store update emails.
Overall, communication is key and I feel once a seller has run past their stated WORKING days timescale, their should be contact with the buyer.
I'm sure the Paypal dispute will work out fine for you.
Hopefully you've tried placing an order with another store by now and had better luck?
PP buyers protection is worthless if the seller moved the money, the seller will be in depth in regards to PP, but if it's a fake account with no real name or real address attached, PP can't retrieve the money...
And if PP can't retrieve the money, the buyers won't get it either.
A fine example of 'digging a hole' and cover it with money from new buyers is 'Bricksters', same kind of thing, did it for quite some time on BL and tried on BO as well, Admin Lawrence was warned of this and was able to shutdown after about 10 transactions (while it took BL 300 transactions to do the same, even with several warnings).
@Stickybricky
A dispute is not enough, you need to upgrade to 'claim' asap. It is never a guarantee you'll get your money back (read reason above), but it's a start.
Of course, it's not truly out of their own pocket, it comes from the 3% in Paypal fees that we all love (on top of poor exchange rates).
Try it and let us know :P (read the small letters first)
But if balance is zero and no CC or bank account attached, good luck (unless you paid from credit card) :P