Glenn is one of Tamebay’s regular commenters and has been contributing to the site for many years. Today he runs through different types of questions buyers submit and asks the question “Do I want to trade with these customers?”.
With the automatic five star DSR rating for communication if a buyer doesn’t contact the seller pre or post sale there’s a school of thought which says the perfect customer doesn’t ask a question and if they do add them to your .
There also comes a stage when your business grows to the extent that answering questions takes up too much resource in comparison to sales generated. Many a time I’ve researched and answered a question for the potential buyer not to place a bid.
Several years ago a friend experimented with two eBay accounts answering all questions on on and deleting all pre-sales questions on the other and only dealing with post sales issues and he found at that time it made no difference to actual sales!
Here are Glenn’s thoughts on the issue:
Any seller who thinks all their listings are perfect with all pertinent information contained within their listings is very probably wrong. Over the last 9 years trading I have made some dreadful mistakes and have been grateful to potential customers bringing listing errors to my attention. However the proportion of useful (relevant) messages from potential customers against the volume of unwanted (nonsense) messages in the form of questions from buyers makes me question the value of questions.
If I could block all questions I would, indeed if I could automate the adding of the questioner to my blocked buyers list I would.
Proportionally 1 out of 50 questions is a reasonable question and warrants a reply, and perhaps 1 in 10 of the answered reasonable questions results in a sale. Not a high return rate, but I’m still happy to answer reasonable questions and if appropriate update or amend a listing with the requested information.
This leaves 49 out of 50 questions which are complete and utter nonsense and the questioner tend to fall within one of the categories listed.
The Conditional buyer – Those buyers who ask about returns before they make a purchase set off alarm bells = BLOCKED
The Feedback monster – regardless of the relevancy of the question, those buyers with a history of leaving negative feedback = BLOCKED
The idiot buyer – “Is this black long sleeved T shirt a T shirt with long sleeves and is it black? = BLOCKED
The subjective buyer – do you think the shoes will match my pink handbag? = BLOCKED
The I want a different colour or size to the ones listed buyer = BLOCKED
The demanding buyer – I need this item by. (Sorry, but I don’t have any influence over Royal Mail) = BLOCKED
The wheeler, dealer buyer – I want to buy your product but I’m not going to pay the asking price, would you accept £xx = BLOCKED
The collect buyer – On the few occasions I have relented and accepted callers they have never turned up at the time agreed and I do not want dodgy cheques or £20 notes, or haggling over the price after the sale on my doorstep = BLOCKED
Will you accept cash buyer = BLOCKED
The Blocked buyer seeking absolution – I know I have strikes against me for non payment, but please, please let me buy = BLOCKED for ever
But worse, much worse than all the emailed questions are the @#XXZ#!$’s who telephone me at all hours of the night with any of the above stupid questions. These people are more annoying than PPI sales reps.
Don’t forget that if you answer that question the DSR for communication comes into play.
Bottom line – Asking me a question is probably going to result in your addition to my blocked buyers list, and I was wondering why my sales were down.
Editors Note:
Best practice if you don’t want questions from buyers is to use – dynamic answers that eBay generates based on the information you provided within the item listing. e.g. “Is international postage offered?” would give the answer “Yes, the seller offers international postage. This seller posts to the following countries:” followed by a list of the countries you specified you ship to when you listed the product.
Once you’ve set your Auto Answers you also have the option to . They can still send you a message from other eBay pages when ever they see the “Contact Seller” link, but not directly from a listing.
34 Responses
Is this meant to be ironic? Maybe I have too much time but I tend to answer all questions that are sent to me, no matter how inane. From memory the only one I deleted and blocked without replying was a prospective buyer whose question involved copying paragraphs from the Sale of Goods Act.
I am always astonished whenever anybody goes on about buyers questions. I know I sell Specialist Books and on the whole my customers are great people(one exception recently who was exactly the opposite) but my experience is that they ask questions because they have something that they would like to know the answer to.
Often I find that it is a question that had not occurred to me previously and often I alter my listing to put in the answer in case others might also be interested. So I shall continue to answer questions and I will not block potential customers just for asking a(usually) very sensible question.
hurrah hurrah hip hip hooray
a real normal and sensible ebay seller
Glenn you say it all were 1000% with you
in our opinion anyone who has time to piddle about with questions is either part time paranoid, or amatuer ! or lonely
The article was meant to be light-hearted and I say good luck to any sellers who wish to answer questions. But let me give you an example of a recent question.
“…..I live in Germany but can I still buy your (details removed by me). I would buy 2 size at once to be sure to get the right one…”
Firstly I only sell to the UK market
Secondly I wonder what the potential buyer intended doing with the item which didn’t fit?
I get a lot just like this one
I was excited when I read this and rushed to turn my questions off. I have already had 3 phone calls in about 2 hours. Including the most recent one at 6:30pm.
So now instead of being able to answer the stupid questions in my own time I have to answer them when the phone rings.
I have turned them back on now.
if a buyer needs to ask a question we dont want them ,we want those that know what they buy, who are confident in there own judgment,
I’ve never read so much rubbish in all my life.
“in our opinion anyone who has time to piddle about with questions is either part time paranoid, or amatuer ! or lonely”
What a load of tripe.
It’s called a Customer Service department.
It may differ depending on the product type but most of our questions seem to relate to the way ebay works i.e. “do you ship to..” when ebay should automatically show the international postage price. “do you offer combined postage” when the global setting should highlight this more clearly etc etc.
If ebay spent more time promoting things like this and less time dicking around with adverts we would all be in a better place!
The best question I had was “I just bought the item, and I see it says out of stock on ebay – what do I do – do I wait for you to get more stock in?” [note they bought the last item I had!]
I have tested a powerseller account blocking all presales queries. This went on for at least a year and did not make any difference in sales. Actually save quite a lot of early morning time to do order processing.
we are platinum TRS we dont answer questions at all, £150k sales in the last 90 days,
Communication DSRs a big fat zero. though like just about everyone were
sailing close to the wind on postage costs,
so our customer service dept has got the boot and were passing on the saving in postage reductions LOL LOL LOL
I think this has some merits. I tried it on one account and tried to ask myself a question from another!
This is the message…
https://www.diigo.com/item/image/2tebb/5vdb
John
what really annoys is that some manage to ask questions even if you have them turned off,
and on the customer service subject, we dont think we are giving good service to our customers by wasting our time answering idiots,
we dont delude ourselves that by answering a telephone or an email we have good customer service
It Dependant on what you are selling. Some products attract more numpties than others.
I agree with the author. We are in a niche market and do not need too chase after numpties for sales.
90% of questions are carp. The other 10% only result in 5% extra sales. And half the questions i answer can be answered by using google or reading the auction.
I answer all questions….not because I am lonely or want a penfriend, but because I feel ignorant if I don’t. It plays on my mind that just because they are challenged in the brain cell department doesn’t mean I have to be rude.
Having said that I don’t suffer fools gladly and approx 50% of ‘questioners’ end up on my BBL….LOL
Can I just clarify this point though – In the opening post Glenn put…
“Don’t forget that if you answer that question the DSR for communication comes into play”.
Does this mean that if you don’t answer it they can not leave a star rating for Communication?
That can’t be right surely – or have I misunderstood?
But how would you feel about buying from ebay generally if you had heard that most (all) sellers couldn’t be bothered to answer questions?
Surely as a site policy, it’s a terrible one, whatever the effect on a single seller?