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I’ve been an avid Amazon online shopper since 2001, but I was surprised and slightly amused by what happened the other night.
For the first time ever, one of my Amazon.co.uk orders did not arrive. It was particularly annoying because, although I could have bought the book more cheaply on eBay, I chose a seller on Amazon’s Marketplace because they offered ‘Fast UK Dispatch’. I really wanted the book within five days.
Amazon recommends that you wait a fortnight before chasing up orders. After that had passed, I emailed the seller to let him know I hadn’t received my book. Luckily, he had another copy and promised to send it to me.
It finally arrived three-and-a-half weeks after I had placed the order, and I immediately left the seller feedback on Amazon.
When you give feedback on Amazon, you get five options: ‘5 – Excellent’, ‘4 – Good’, and so on. I opted for ‘3 – Fair’.
A few minutes later I received an email from the seller, offering me a full refund in exchange for removing my feedback. He said that, because I’d given a rating of ‘3’, it meant a ‘neutral’ score was posted on his profile and his overall rating had dropped by 1% — which could result in a fall in sales.
I have since found this guidance on Amazon:
Positive Feedback: 5 or 4 stars?
Neutral Feedback: 3 stars?
Negative Feedback: 2 or 1 stars
For those of you interested in the stats, this particular seller had 753 ratings in the last 12 months (therefore not scoring as highly for ‘number of sales’ against the many others who have thousands of ratings). My feedback of ‘3’ meant that his 30 day feedback dropped from a positive 95% rating (due to 5% neutral feedback within the last 30 days) to 94%.
It’s funny how one person in 753 can make such a difference – but we all know it’s a tough market out there. It just goes to show how we, as buyers, can have such an impact on people vying for our trade!
Nikki is a Client Service Manager & Senior Online Marketing Executive in the Online Marketing team at Coast Digital. She joined the team in January 2008 and is focused on being the interface between the client and the Online Marketing team, running email marketing campaigns for her clients, as well as driving quality and structure throughout the business. Her clients include Wiltshire Farm Foods, apetito, and Slendertone.
Having spent 9 years as a Printed Circuit Board Design Engineer, she ‘fell’ into Digital Marketing in 2003 and has been passionate about it ever since. As such Nikki enjoys playing an important role in a growing company with technology at its heart.
(7) comments
Comments
Bingo! I had a look last night out of curiousity - his rating had gone from about 95% to 64%ish - and he's stopped trading. He's got loads of complaints from many furious buyers. Shame - means the good sellers (like you no doubt) may have to try that bit harder to convince those tainted with this bad experience.
I sell books and videos on amazon also, but always send them within 24 hours, cheers, Pete.
He definitely deserves the black mark as many purchasers have commented that their items have been 'lost in the post' yet he still maintains a fairly high ie. 95% rating.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=3149571&#what
I did remove my feedback; mainly because I'd been in two minds about it in the first place. Peter thinks I'm generous and I thought along the same lines. However, my husband was of the opinion that as I'd got the item I shouldn't complain.
So, as the seller asked so nicely and I could understand the loss of sales, I removed my feedback immediately.
HOWEVER, despite my not actually wanting the full refund promised, I was annoyed that the seller proceeded to ignore all emails from me. So... I reported the seller to Amazon - on the basis that this may be a dirty tactic they were using, and not following up on.
Thinking my complaint to Amazon would go into a black hole, I was delighted to get a very prompt response confirming a full refund. Well done Amazon!
I still don't know what happened though - if they got the seller to cough up, or if they sorted the dispute themselves...