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Communications Problems and How to Stop Them Ruining Your eBay Business

Nasty problems often occur from misunderstandings, very often where an innocent comment, intended to help, is misconstrued by the recipient. Make sure it does not happen to you ….

Someone emailed me today: ‘Is that the email box where I’ll find Avril Harper? I have a query.’

I replied: ‘Yes. What is the Query?’

Seconds later this appeared in my mailbox: ‘Thanks for your brusque reply. In view of your attitude I no longer want to bid on your items.’

I tend to ignore most letters like that, they’re not worth wasting time over, but this one stumped me, just what had I done to offend him?

It transpired he was querying my book about getting started on eBay and he considered my reply: ‘Yes. What is the query?’ to be ‘Short, rude and inconsiderate’.

My answer to that was: ‘If you’re so easily hurt and take umbrage when someone is trying to be helpful, you will never succeed on eBay. You will upset buyers and sellers alike, and quite frankly I don’t want my book to help you on course to upsetting so many people. Go buy elsewhere’.

Then I quickly removed him from my bidding list in case he bought later and left nasty feedback.

My main point here isn’t to prove how difficult people can be, but to show how an innocent comment, intended to help, can be misconstrued by the recipient.

I’m told it’s something to do with body language, or lack of it, and the experts say because the other person has just words to guide him and no facial or body gestures to determine the other person’s mood, it’s very easy to assume insult where none was intended. So what happened to me by email is just as likely to happen by letter, or telephone.

The following tips should help you avoid problems like this and show how even words used in your eBay listings can cause confusion and reduce your selling chances:

* Let’s face it, my disgruntled associate could have provided more information in his own first email, both allowing me to provide a longer more meaningful response and meaning I would not end up answering his question with a question of my own. But he didn’t, he just asked if he’d reached the correct email box and he obviously did not want to waste his own time writing a question that no one might see. He was the brusque one, not me, and many people are just as lazy and expect you to do all of the work. The bigger you grow, the more awkward and indecipherable questions you’ll receive, and the more ill-considered negative feedback you’ll get. You’ll avoid most by sending an auto-responder reply to pacify all but the most difficult people. Most email accounts allow you to add a signature file to all your outgoing emails which is every bit as good as a costly professional auto-responder service.

Try something like:

‘Thank you for your email. I am not at my desk at the moment but I will answer your email immediately I return. In the meantime you might find answers to your queries at a site set up especially for my customers at: www.mysite.com If your question is not answered within 24 hours please email again at myemail@address.com.'

If you don’t have a web page for Frequently Asked Questions, include the information in your ‘About Me’ page and give the appropriate web address in the auto-responder/signature file message.

Information most often asked by potential bidders concerns delivery times, postage costs, return policy, so be sure to cover these on your FAQs page and continue adding information according to commonly asked questions.

* Colloquialisms and slang terms might be understood by people within ten miles radius of your computer but could be meaningless or even appear rude to others not quite so familiar with strictly local terminology. You've probably grown up with words you think everyone else uses and understands and it can be hard to know what is universally understood and what isn't. In the North East of England, for example, 'bairns' means 'children', and 'brown' is a kind of beer and pronounced 'Broon'. They're far-fetched examples, but unless you're careful you could pack your eBay listings with terms only local bidders will understand which will limit your market considerably. A good spellchecker will locate most of these words, since most do not appear in dictionaries, and you can subsequently alter them to suit.

* On a wider scale, remember spelling varies between countries, particularly America and the UK. So if you're selling Jewellery and you promote mainly on eBay.com you'll need to remember the American word is 'jewelry' and this is the term you must use in title and description or your products won't appear on eBay's USA search engine. Much the same goes for colour (UK) and color (USA), favourite/favorite, grey/gray (sometimes), humour/humor. Here's a great tip: create your listings - title and description - in ‘Microsoft Word’ or other international editor - set your spellchecker to UK format and you'll spot all words not spelled correctly for eBay.co.uk listings. For eBay.com, use the same listing, but set the spellchecker to US, and you should see lots of words thrown out as misspelled. Change them as indicated to US format and load this into your listings on eBay.com.

* Some words just sound better than others meaning much the same thing and can create an air of mystery and excitement for your products.

- 'Gold Plated' for example, sounds cheap; 'Vermeil' and 'Gold Overlay' sound just that little bit more expensive!

- 'Reprint' means a copy of something else, often an old item in the public domain, and most people know what it means. 'Second strike' is a term I've seen applied to reproduction postcards which has generated double figure bidding for something worth pennies which can be printed millions of times from the owner's computer. That term 'second strike' was confusing even to me and I've been in the postcard business for years; it's a term best avoided. It's dishonest to use words just to confuse bidders into thinking your product is something it isn't, so exercise caution choosing words to dress up your listings. That 'Second Strike' example is acceptable where a definition is provided alongside so bidders know exactly what it means.

Let these ideas be your guide:

- 'Vintage' sounds better than 'Old'.

- 'Pristine' beats 'Perfect'.

* Descriptions are subjective. My idea of 'good condition' may be different from yours. Today, a postcard I listed as 'good condition' fetched a complaint from the buyer that the card was a little faded. That was true, but the card was 104 years old and a little fading on a real photographic postcard, to my mind, is not a major problem. I explained this, offered a refund, the card is now on its way back to me. Face it, your opinion will not always match the buyer's and it's better to offer a money back guarantee in all of your listings, as long as the product is returned in 'as posted' condition. For argumentative buyers, explain that descriptions are subjective, you stand by your original wording, and offer a refund where second chance buyers exist or just relist the item.