Sad Day.... Had to Block my 1st customer on brickowl!

brickman4you

Over 800 orders... over 200 positive feedback... Yet the troll buyer leaves my first neutral feed back. Yes it gets better....

Original feedback - "One of the figures came with a fake lego head. Otherwise transaction was great."

My Public Reply both via email and in feedback reply - "New Minifig head is in the mail."

Since recently getting a lot with fake ironman comic con which I trashed, I thought, I must have missed some fake SW. So I sent a new fig from my personal lego collection.

Customers Reply - received the envelope with replacement head today, but there was nothing in there just a plastic bag and the original invoice. I hope we can get this sorted out! Thanks!

So UPSP in stealing penny valued lego minifig heads. Sounds more like a scam on a more popular action site I have been dealing with.

I'm not putting anymore thought into this, but why should I not be allowed to view buyers feedback as well on this site.

If you want to band this buyer *helm* also just PM me.

-gary

Hoddie

See? This is what I hate about BL - the "sellers mafia" that black balls buyers whenever they raise problems. I really don't want to see that happen here on BO and sharing lists of supposed dodgy buyers should be an account-closing offence imo. Pretty sure that would be illegal in many jurisdictions, it certainly is in the UK where BO is based.

So this guy tells you that you sent a fake head. You take him at his word, great, but then when he says he didn't get the replacement head you sent, suddenly he's a con artist. You said it yourself, they're penny parts, why the hell would he bother?

Look at it from their point of view. They believe you tried to con them by sending a counterfeit part. Then your "replacement" is an empty envelope. Their reward for bringing this to your attention? You try and get all sellers to black ball them. In their position, how annoyed would you be?

bricksinbins

Once is a coincident. Twice, there's something fishy going on.

Hoddie

Not necessarily, I'm sorry. But "BL mafia" says you're automatically dodgy just because the seller messed up in the first instance, and maybe even in the second... sellers usually quick to ask forgiveness for mistakes but usually very slow to offer it themselves.

How was the replacement packed?

Had the buyer twice claimed a high-value order hadn't arrived, then yeah, more reason to suspect something dodgy going on (could be the postman though, or a neighbour, not necessarily the buyer), but a minifig head? Come on.

brickman4you

@bricksinbins Yes, thats all I'm saying is that via all the comments and correspondence between the buyer something fishy indeed was going on.

Sorry for the rant and I apologize if it offended any other sellers or customers on this site. I think my main point was that one should be able to see the public feedback that the buyers left for other sellers. I'm going to ask the postal service to look into why a package was opened during delivery if that was the case, but I'm not so naive to assume the customer is always right.

@hoodie I understand you hate BL, never brought it up in my post.

Lawrence

I'm sorry to hear of the trouble that you have had. In cases like this, the best thing to do is to contact us, usually via email from the link at the bottom of the page. We can then look into the situation further. We do not believe it is appropriate to share customer usernames for other stores to block.

We have looked into this situation, and after looking at message histories and previous orders we have no reason to believe that the customer is behaving dishonestly.

bricksinbins

And just to make it clear. I'm not saying the customer is to blame either. Just that if it seems there are problems with shipments to a certain address or even area, it would indicate there is something fishy. Somewhere along the chain. Unfortunately, a seller has very little ability to do anything about it.

As an example, I got a large order the other day and discovered another order had been torn open and the remains of the packaging pushed into the box my order came in. That buyer is clearly not receiving his order. Also looks like an inside job along the delivery chain.

JayB-SoCal

Next on "Murder, She Wrote": The case of the single minifig head scam.

brickman4you

@ Jayb-Socal I know it sounds like blowing something out of proportion, but a very demanding customer contacting you outside to BO messaging asking for / wanting an extra refund for missing parts or a mistake. I'm sure most seller are working extra hard to be accurate 99.99% all of the time. Sorry but one error in an order does not constitute free bricks. I think most all buyers don't fit into this category, but seller need to be aware the more they give into this the more it will happen.

JayB-SoCal

It was just a joke, you can block who you want. I would, however, disagree with the behind-the-scenes sharing of blocks. Someone with 800 orders and 200 feedbacks is bound to have an occasional problem with 1 or 2 stores. I would hate to think if I were picky with 1 or 2 stores out of that many orders that my account would get passed around for blacklisting. A massively problem customer, sure, but this does seem to be an extreme reaction to want to share the specific customer with others.

Hoddie

> @Brickman4you said:
> @ Jayb-Socal I know it sounds like blowing something out of proportion, but a very demanding customer contacting you outside to BO messaging asking for / wanting an extra refund for missing parts or a mistake. I'm sure most seller are working extra hard to be accurate 99.99% all of the time. Sorry but one error in an order does not constitute free bricks. I think most all buyers don't fit into this category, but seller need to be aware the more they give into this the more it will happen.

Just to point out, this customer didn't create two problems. The seller acknowledged that they themselves are the likely source of the first problem. This then leaves the empty envelope issue. So, this customer was about to black-listed because the seller made a mistake and then had the misfortune to suffer a second injustice - either the post man stole their replacement or the seller used inadequate packaging and the postal machines took care of the rest. A little ridiculous and typical of the BL mafia.

For the record, I don't "hate" BL - I just dislike sellers who automatically believe that buyers are con artists. Typical behaviour on BL, and not something I want to see here on BO.

unbrickable

@Hoddie yeah but the other challenge is some customers immediately think, oooh this seller is ties to rip me off. You simply do not know what happened between the point where you sent it and it arrives on the doorstep of the customer.

It is always difficult to determine what really happened but in my experience aslong you stay in touch with your customer and find a solution together there is not any problem. Nearly everybody is willing to coperate and understand this kind of things happen when you ship it worldwide in a postal envelop :)

Then there is that 1 in a 100 who is maybe a con artist or can be labeled as "very demanding" but yeah just solve the situation and move on. Ofcourse you gut feeling sometimes tells you this can only be someone who is trying to fool me but yeah on the other hand it is not fair to assume this customer is really doing with bad intentions.

But why in the world would you share an username of somebody ? This is something between you and the seller. If you believe he/she is really a con artist or something like it, contact lawrence and he will look at it.

@Brickman4you BTW, as seller you have a feeling where to ship with/without insurance to prevent things like inside jobs etc. Sometimes you need to protect the customer against thing they probably can't or will not know about. and if they ask about it you can always explain :D

@JayB-SoCal i totally can understand you point of view.