I need some help! I really really hate not delivering a perfect product, and I realize there are some things outside of my control. This is making me not want to do FBM I cannot handle it, I think I care too much.
I just got a message from a buyer “where’s my stuff” saying his party is tomorrow and it was to be delivered by Sat Oct 28th.
Now I will be super honest, it says it supposed to be delivered today, but it was stuck in Seattle for a few days and I really don’t think it will be there tomorrow. If someone is more familiar with shipping maybe they can make me feel better It is to be delivered to Saint Charles MO and hasn’t even hit that State yet.
I just feel terrible my items are party items and is THE MAIN item at a party. The party will really not be good without it. I do sell this particular item as a digital download on Etsy, so I wonder if I should just send him the data file for them to make, it really wouldn’t be hard.
I really don’t understand why he would buy something that had a possible delivery date of the 30th if he needed it by the 28th. But I am not going to say that to them!
My questions, how does this normally play out? I used Amazon Shipping. Its too late to over night, I have a similar product at Amazon but it says soonest to be delivered is Tuesday. I should be covered by a A-Z claim. How about if he leaves a bad review? am I stuck with that? would you do something different than what I doing? I think maybe I am invested too much in delivering perfect.
My stats say I deliver 4 days early on average, so that’s helpful I hope
If the customer wants something delivered fast then they should order something that’s shipped by FBA and says overnight/2-day, not something where the delivery window says it might be past when they need it. Also if they bothered checking the tracking number they’d see it’s expected to be delivered before when they need it.
If they get it later than today and they want to return it, then just let em return it. No real reason to stress over this, it’s the buyer’s problem they can’t read, and if you’re out some shipping costs over it that’s just the cost of doing business.
You made this so black and white and took the feelings out of it. You are 100% right. I still new 4 months in, so I don’t want to A$$hole giving me a bad review while I am getting started.
If the Buyer complains about delivery in Feedback, but you used Buy Shipping (yes) AND you shipped on time (did you?), then Amazon should strike through the feedback, and it shouldn’t be held against your rating.
Being a newbie, have you taken some time to read through the Amazon “help” forums? Search for “scammers” or such, you will see that this is a Very Large Part of selling on Amazon. And there isn’t a lot you can do, Amazon has trained the customer on how to do these things on their platform. As @GGX stated, you did your part. Amazon is not easy or for the faint of heart.
If you think FBM is not for you, read up also on the pitfalls of FBA. Depending on your product, it may not be a good fit. And things will be Entirely Out of Your Control. I don’t do FBA, but have seen SO many posts about it going wrong, it seems like just a different set of headaches.
Try to focus on all of your sales that have worked out just fine, and imagine all those happy customers that you did “delight” with your conscientious attention.
I see 2 paths forward with this (I’m assuming USPS missed the expected delivery on the 27th and now the customer’s pissed off and is going to create a problem out of it).
When the customer receives the product, they can request a return, which you basically have to grant since it’s within 30 days.
You refund them and don’t request the item back.
Either way you choose, just be professional and strictly follow Amazon’s policies to the letter on what to do. (Eg. if you’re required to provide a return label, do so). And if you write anything to the customer, say the minimum amount you need to. You’re not going to make this customer happy at this point, he’s just out to give you grief now.
One big benefit of FBA is the fact that it makes problem buyers a lot less personal. It’s a lot easier to be pragmatic and just factor in returns/scams as a cost of doing business when someone isn’t lying to your face.
Customers will lie and yes it hurts but you have to learn to not take it personally. This is a tough lesson to learn as a newbie. Heck, it still hurts me and I’m an “oldie”.
I had a buyer recently tell me that a CD was not in the case of a "new’ item. Unlikely, but not impossible (because it happened to me in a retail store).
This is how I knew they weren’t being truthful. They stated that they had purchased several "new ones" already and the cases were empty. In other words they were saying “don’t send me another one because it will be empty too”.
The sad part of the story is the CD was a religious item. SAD BUT TRUE!!!
Some people have difficulty not taking it personally, especially when someone’s basically slapping them in the face with obvious lies. It’s easier to change fulfillment methods than one’s personality.
That said, there’s many factors that go into choosing to use FBA, primarily sales volume. FBA is good for products that move quickly. Not dealing with fulfillment and fulfillment related issues frees up a LOT of time and saves a lot of headaches. Assuming there’s no product quality issue, fulfillment related issues are the #1 problem/headache when it comes to ecommerce.
1- giving a link to anywhere outside amazon could get your account suspended.
2- giving the product to the customer again in any manner will likely mean they return the item they purchased. so if you give them a download somehow, they will likely return the physical object and you will be out shipping, OR they will keep the physical object and get a full refund for late delivery so you are out product and shipping.
so, having used Amazon buy shipping, I would have just used the generic bot-sounding boilerplate “Item Not Received” template, each and every time they contact you because any other conversation is likely to lead to trouble for you. I basically try to sound as much like an amabot as possible, unless a customer has an interesting issue or question that isn’t likely to be a scam or lead to loss.
the INR template is useful oftentimes even when not technically applicable, but still can be used…
“be the bot” - do as the amaboneheads do, and just copy-paste generic crap until they stop trying to scam you. if you can make “them” think you are an “it” instead of a “you” then those "them"es may stop pursuing a meaningful conversation, because they themses are probably too smart to keep attempting to scam a MF’ing bot. (if they think you are a bot, they won’t want to continue chatting with you. remember, they are not ‘your’ customers, they are Lord Zon’s, and you are just another ama-peon.)
SAS Confidential (members only)