As I had mentioned in my previous post, I’m in the process of liquidating my dog boutique items by selling all the inventory on EBay. Things were going so well that it almost became an obsession until I had my first bad EBay experience. I sold a really nice dog bowl shaped like a sunglasses. The dog bowl comes with a placemat and a squeaky ball, so it was a really nice piece. The item costs me $15 wholesale and I sold it for $20. I ended up breaking even after shipping and fees. I knew I wouldn’t make any profit liquidating my inventory on EBay because the original wholesale price is already overpriced for EBay market.
After the item was shipped, one day I received an email from my buyer asking why she received a different item in the package. She said she got a “metal thingy” and a lens wipe. I was immediately in panicky mode after reading her email. My first thought was this lady was trying to rip me off. I went to the discussion forum and asked for suggestions from other sellers. Based on their suggestion, I asked my buyer to send me a picture of the package, the metal thingy she claimed being put in the package, and the package label. A week gone by without hearing anything from her. At first I was relieved thinking either she tried to rip me off and decided not to pursue it, or maybe somehow she got her package mixed up or something. Finally I got an email back from her with the picture of package and the label, and the wrong items she found inside. The “metal thingy” looks like a metal screw and I can’t really tell what it’s for. The label does say my name on it. At this point I wasn’t sure what to do. So I went back to EBay community forum and asked for some suggestions again. Could this lady really try to rip me off over $20?
After reading some suggestions, I did what any sellers should do in this particular scenario. I gave her full refund. I lost about $20 sales and $15 worth of merchandise. I have to admit that it hurts that I lost money. However I just got a feeling that my buyer is telling the truth. It just doesn’t seem right that she would go through all the efforts to take pictures just so she can get $20 free merchandise. Even if she did, there is no way for me to prove it. So I wrote her an email telling how sorry I was. I did everything I could to make my buyers happy, however I have no control when it comes to delivering the package. She emailed me back saying she appreciated all the efforts to get this issue taken care of. She also appreciated the full refund and left me a positive feedback.
Sometimes bad things happen to you, and you just brush it off and move on. Who knows? Perhaps she did live in a shady neighborhood and someone stole the package, opened it, took the bowl and replaced it with something else. You’ll just never know and you have to do the right thing. This whole experience actually does not hold me back from selling my stuffs on EBay. In fact this experience made me focus on my original goal, get rid of the inventory on EBay in order to make room and take a portion of loss instead of 100% loss by letting these stuffs sitting in my closet unused.
Tags: ebay, ebay business, ebay lesson, liquidating on ebay
