Received a 1 star on Amazon with buyer saying she never received the item.
Issued a full refund and sent a replacement.
Contacted the customer, explained the situation, politely asked
whether she could remove the 1 star. She said she would “look at it”.
Week later, nothing happened. Contacted her again and she said
she changed the 1 star to a 5 star. I explained that feedback cannot be
changed, only removed. She then said she changed the rating,
and to stop asking her to remove it.
She most likely gave another seller a 5 star with the text something along
the lines of “Changing this rating from a 1 star to a 5 star for the excellent service”.
Why are you contacting them in the first place? Other than relaying information about her order, you should not be asking for her to remove or change feedback, as far I as I am aware, that is against policy.
This is from Seller University
“You can’t ask a customer to remove or update a product review. When a customer posts negative seller feedback, however, we encourage you to contact them individually to resolve the problem—as long as you don’t offer any incentives for doing so. For example, you can say, “If you’re satisfied that we’ve resolved your concerns, it’s possible to update or remove the feedback you originally provided here.” You can hyperlink the “here” text to redirect to the seller feedback they submitted.”
There was no “the problem” to resolve on the order side of things, as this was simply a customer check the box error so I would not reach out and just leave a public reply.
Amazon does not vet buyers or sellers for competency. We have feedback about a camera not working, and we don’t sell cameras.
If one negative feedback is affecting your ability to sell stuff, you have bigger problems to worry about IMO. We also had a hard time letting this kind of thing go, but now we simply DNGAF about feedback.
We used to have lots of fun with the public replies, with things like “grandma is that you?” or “Nice try (enter name of competitor) we know its you”. Thankfully that business sold and all the snarky, witty replies with it.
You asked her more than once to change the feedback, and you’re questioning her intelligence?
Be happy it worked out at all. If I tried and couldn’t figure it out (because, PS, amazon doesn’t make it super easy), then I would not even try again if you asked a 2nd time.
Most consumers understand that other consumers are dumb, even the dumb ones. I assert many consumers do not pay attention to seller feedback compared to reviews on Amazon, unlike the Bay.
This is true for used conditions because it matters how honest the rater of said product quality is. By contrast, I don’t think anyone cares what a sellers feedback is for a bag of bird seed.
This is why I don’t respond to or address negative feedback (other than request bot removal).
If they want a refund for a missing item they can go through the proper channel to get it. If they send a buyer-seller message saying they didn’t receive it they’ll get an immediate refund no questions asked. But if they complain in feedback/reviews I don’t have the time to try to reach out to a stupid person.
We also believe that negative public dialogue is the last resort not the only resort. But in this case it is just a mistake.
When someone writes negative feedback then asks for help, we know they have already used their leverage, and made us look bad, so we are usually unwilling to lift a finger for them at that point. Compare that to a message about a problem, where we will bend over backwards to make things better as a basic human principle.
If they are going to talk S we might as well get paid for it.
@Wickatunk it sounds like you acted within Amazon policy to resolve the customer issue (INR) and request that she “update or remove the feedback [she] originally provided here”.
Personally, after a few weeks, rather than contacting her again, I would have posted a public reply indicating that the Buyer had been refunded and sent a replacement, and that Buyers can message you directly through Amazon with concerns about their orders for the speediest resolution. <Honestly, you can still do this.
BUT…every business is different, and there’s no one right way to do anything.
And I would caution you to have some grace for her, even though I know how frustrating it is when we hardly get feedback at all and one is negative; like @selg said, Amazon does not make it easy for Buyers to engage with 3P Sellers for anything more than one chance for Feedback.
Did you use Amazon Buy Shipping to send the order? If you did, use the feedback removal tool to request removal. They usually strike through those and claim the responsibility is Amazon’s, it’s part of the Buy Shipping guarantee.
Even though still visible through the strike-through, it will no longer count against your feedback metric.
This not against policy. If there is a problem with an order, and in this case there was, we are encouraged by Amazon to resolve the problem, even though Amazon does it best to make communication difficult.
No in this case I did not use Amazon shipping because they suggested Priority Mail while the item could be shipped by USPS Ground Advantage for half the price.
Asking them to correct their feedback is not fixing their INR problem is it???
Read what you put…
Right here you are done with the problem.
If her INR problem was fixed, then you are not trying to fix a problem, you are trying to fix your feedback.
Feedback for the most part is a huge hit to the ego, and we all have experienced it. Amazon DNGAF. If you truly feel slighted order them a gift from ruindays and pray you don’t get caught.
