After having been a seller on Etsy for a little over a year now, I must come clean of one of my gravest fears. Feedback. Feedback can be a very, very scary thing. For an eBay seller with a bazillion sales of manufactured items, a feedback score of 98% really isn’t too hurtful. However, on Etsy many would consider a 98% feedback to be awful, and not consider buying from that seller.
Beaded Ring - $4.95
Feedback is more of an issue on Etsy because you are dealing with handmade items. One would assume that the quality of a handmade item would always be comparably better than that of a manufactured one, but this is not always the case. A handmade item is not inspected by anyone for quality control purposes, so we have to simply take the seller at his or her word that it is worth the price they are asking for it. This is where feedback comes into play. Form a buyer’s point of view, I always check the feedback of a seller, especially if I see that they have a score of less than 100%. I have been burned before, and would rather not have the same situation occur again. However, I’m even afraid to leave a seller a negative on a product that was poorly constructed or didn’t arrive until I absolutely have to, out of fear that the seller will retaliate and give me one in return.
Butterfly Earrings - $9.00
However, now that I have gain my own negative, and had to deal with a debacle of hoops to try to get it changed, I am now a little more sympathetic towards the seller with only 1 or 2 negative in a plethora of positives.
In the situation referenced above, a customer ordered 2 items. A beaded ring and a pair of earrings. Both were sent to her in the same package and arrived shortly thereafter. A few days later I received raving feedback over the beaded ring, but not the earrings. I simply assumed that the customer accidentally only left the one feedback, thinking that it counted for both – and forgot about it completely. Of course, I gave the customer two good feedback ratings for the two items, thanking her for her interest in my shop.
Tea Cup Ring - $7.00
About a month later, I received a negative feedback for the earrings, the comment being “never received.” Waiiiit… what? I know she got them because they were in the same package as the ring, and I sent them together. She claimed to have received the ring, and even left a positive for it. I immediately contacted the customer. Did she check the package? Had she thrown it away already? They had been sent together so it should be in there!
She checked. The earrings were there. Oops.
So I sent a kiss and makeup request, so glad that this debacle could be taken care of before the negative did any damage towards my shop. I wouldn’t want prospecting customers to think that I ignored orders that aren’t received!
Problem was, the customer couldn’t figure out how to agree to the kiss and make up I had sent.
It took over TWO MONTHS, several attempts at contacting admin and dozens of convos later before the customer FINALLY figured out how to change the negative feedback. This is a long time to be at 98% in an Etsy shop. There is no way I will know if I lost any customers during that time period or not because of the red mark, but I am glad that it was finally taken care of.
Sparkle Earrings - $5.00
If only there has been a simple pop-up reminder, something to the effect that eBay utilizes, that asked “Have you contacted the seller?” when she tried to leave her negative… I can think of so many scenarios where this would be SO HELPFUL. If a customer does not receive a package I send, or the items arrives damaged, I try to do everything in my power to satisfy the customer and replace or refund the product. However, if the customer never contacts the seller asking for the refund or replacement (or in my case, what was just simple confusion) then how are we supposed to grapple with the negatives once we get them? My faith in the kiss and make up system has been severely wounded at this point. For some buyers who are new to Etsy, apparently, it is too complicated for them to figure out.
I do hope that with Etsy rethinking the feedback system that they will implement something of this nature in place. It would do a world of good. In the meantime, I’ve become a little softer towards sellers with less-than-perfect scores. Mistakes can happen to anyone.
Tagged: art, business, earrings, etsy, feedback, jewelry, online, packages, postal service, ring, selling
Megan's Beaded Blog 
This is well written and thank you so much. I had a buyer who would not respond to e-mail requesting a confirmation of her address. I relectantly sent the package to the Pay Pal address of record…well it turns out that that address was 4 years old…hence the bracelet never made it to her at all. Unfortunately, I didn’t insure the package, lesson learned here to be sure, and now 2 months later, the package has not made it back to me. So somewhere out there, someone else is enjoying her bracelet. I lost the sale totally and I had to refund her money plus mailing charges after trying to contact her multiple times to offer her a replacement item at a steep discount for her troubles. She has not posted a feedback on this situation, but if she does, I certainly hope it isn’t negative…I did all that was humanly possible to replace the item and doing it more than fairly. Hence, there are gray zones that a “postive” or a “negative” doesnt quite cover. Thanks for this posting!
Jennifer
Jennifer, it sounds like you did everything right and took all of the right measures.
In my experience, I am more likely to choose the Etsy shipping address over the paypal one, as it seems to be more accurate in most cases. That is, if the customer doesn’t get back to with the correct one.
I’m sorry you lost your bracelet sales. That does stink pretty badly. :-(
I agree; this is a well written article. I have one negative feedback. I think it is almost inevitable. No matter how hard we aim to please, life happens. A package gets lost, or ya just have the kind of customer that ya can never make happy. Whatever. I look at feedback, but it isn’t the deal breaker for me when I shop on Etsy.
Oh dear, how stressful! I’m glad you finally got it sorted out. That’s a good idea for a warning to pop up when trying to leave a negative – have you submitted it to Etsy?
I’ve posted the idea in the idea forums a couple of times… I do hope they consider it. While it won’t prevent ALL hasty negatives, I think it would help a great deal.
Thanks for this article! I have one neutral feedback, and it was terrible for me.
I saw once negative feedback without any words. I think it is more than unfair relatively to seller! Buyer must at least choose reason why he wants to leave negative feed!
I agree… leaving a negative without a reason isn’t fair to either party!
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