Guest post by: James Cecil

A couple of days ago I was presented with a problem by one of my customers from my Amazon store ReadItAgain books. The problem was that the shipment of a VHS cassette tape was not the right one that was sent to them. My first thoughts of were of gloom and despair that hit me as I had just walked into the door of my office. I was upset more at myself since I was the one who picked up the VHS cassette with the dust cover that clearly indicated the correct title that the customer ordered which was “The Land Before Time”. I did not even check to make certain that it was the right VHS Cassette tape in the VHS dust cover before I put into the box and got the box ready to ship out the next morning.

How did I find out that I made this error? By selling on Amazon.com I have my Amazon Seller account set up to automatically send me an e-mail copy of my customers concerns and request. That way I will not have to log into Amazon Seller Central and have to retrieve them. The customer that contacted me about this error on my part let me know that her 3-year grandson was disappointed that he did not get the “The Land Before Time” VHS and asked me if I still had that title. While I was still in my gloom and despair mood plus worry about the negative customer rating I would be getting I took a deep breath, exhaled and then went upstairs to a bedroom that has been turned into a storage room. I quickly found the “The Land Before Time” VHS cassette and made absolutely certain I indeed had the right VHS this time around and headed back to my office where I got onto my laptop and logged into my Amazon Seller account.  I immediately sent off an e-mail to my customer apologizing for the error that I made and informed her that I will shipping the correct VHS cassette tape out to her with an extra bonus in it. Four dinosaurs puppets from the “The Land Before Time” movie for her three-year old grandson to enjoy playing with while he watches the “The Land Before Time” VHS tape. I also told my customer that she would not have to pay for shipping and that I was enclosing a self address stamped envelope for the return of the incorrectly shipped VHS tape.

So what have I learned from this? To check and make sure that I have the correct title that the customer has ordered before fulfilling a customers order. You’ll find out like I did that you made a mistake and learn from that mistake. Just remember that it’s not an end of the world moment. You’re only human and you will make many more mistakes as you continue on with your enterprise. By me acknowledging the error to my customer and promptly taking care of the issue I have at least gone above and beyond this customer’s expectation and have given them a satisfying and rewarding experience.

All I can say is to admit to your customers that you made a mistake and show them that you willing to work towards an amicable solution, stay in contact and treat them like you would treat yourself. Sometimes you’ll come up with a simple solution to the problem of which your customer will think you’ve gone over to the top for them and leaves them completely satisfied.

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I remember reading somewhere that the Internet has been called a “Rage Machine” for the way it whips people into a frenzy over news events, and also for the manner in which it induces paranoia, depression and a pic-a-pack of mental disorders.  I don’t think anyone who uses electronic communication is immune to it.  There is corresponding research being done at the moment attempting to chart how the news medium is actually rewiring the wet stuff between our ears to make us literally and physically different than the grandparents who helped bring us onto this sphere.  I’m of course not immune to this which is why I don’t leave comments on new stories and blogs anymore. Always a bad idea.

But because of the way the Amazon system grades resellers such as myself, I am at the mercy of often anonymous folks who leave feedback on the product and service performance I provide.  As of this writing I have sold 13,649 items and received 1,834 feedback ratings. This is about a 13.4% response ratio, which is within the average range. I have a 98% overall positive rating, with 100% positive in the last 30 and 90 day periods.  I am happy with this – it appears to be a little above average for medium sellers and markedly better than large scale shops who often have positives as low as 93%, due to volume and actually, because many of the larger shops pound crap through the tube and don’t have the capacity to respond to buyer concerns. But that’s another post.

You can’t please everyone, for sure, and I have misgraded books, and sometimes flat-out missed a particular of damage because I rushed through the processing. I have made mistakes and earned a couple of those negative feedbacks but there have been a handful – maybe 20 or 30 people – who have left such unbalanced feedbacks that  the wisest thing to do is not respond to them. Just like a bar can’t keep a drunk from walking through the door,  Amazon is all-access and psychotics are people, too! So they can buy stuff and leave feedback with their little tinfoil hats firmly affixed to their unwashed heads. Because shampoo is known to be manufactured with reagents that shrivel your kidneys to make you dependent on government-run dialysis machines, don’t you know.

They often just have unrealistic expectations for a book they buy for a penny and get delivered to their front door for less than four bucks. Or, after spending hundreds of hours being exposed to tales of every shade of nefarious human activity, they impute evil onto your character.

Like the guy who was convinced I was a large scale DVD bootlegger, who should be “BANNED FROM AMAZON,” and that “NO ONE SHOULD DO BUSINESS WITH THIS SELLER.”  It is possible he might have actually gotten a bootleg – I bought over 2,000 CDs and DVDs from one guy, and actually found several bootlegs myself, and discarded them. One or two may have gotten through, even though I did my best. I tried to reason with the guy, but he was convinced I was EVIL.

Then there was the guy who bought an ex-library copy from me, and wrote that I was stealing books from libraries to sell on Amazon, and, “WHY DOES AMAZON ALLOW THIS?”  Now this is serious, because there have been several publicized cases of people stealing books from libraries and selling them on Amazon. Fortunately the way the guy wrote his feedback it was clear he was unaware of the practice of libraries discarding and selling off books and Amazon actually removed the feedback.

Then there was a guy who complained that a book “LOOKED LIKE IT HAD BEEN SITTING ON A SHELF FOR DECADES.” In fact, it was a 50-year-old book, so WTF? He also complained about the quality, given “THE PRICE I PAID.” In fact, he paid about eighty cents for the book, plus shipping. Fortunately, that was a case where he agreed to remove the feedback.

I’ve run into situations where the negs are crazy, or looking to scam a refund and get to keep the item, or just plain D-U-M, dumb, but I’ve gotten to the point where I expect to receive a looney-tunes feedback as matter of doing the business. There are times when I would like access to Amazon’s ginormous database to see exactly what percentage the number of psychos is, but for my small sample it factors out to about one-fifth of one percent.

Next!

This has been post #2 in a series of 4 posts by Frank Giovinazzi set to debut in the coming weeks.  I hope you all like Frank’s zany yet useful posts because I sure do.

- Adam

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