Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike, sit next to Johnny.
This is a fun one today because it's kind of been a part of my whole working life.
Is the customer always right?
So Johnny kind of came up with this idea and we're going to cover some of our
actual feedbacks we have received, and I do think resellers take too much
offense to the feedback they get, especially in eBay land, like
one negative feedback and people ready to lose their mind.
On Amazon, we sell through Amazon FBA,
which is they fulfill it, not yourself.
You can have feedback strike through for anything.
You just go in.
It takes 10 seconds.
You click a button, no matter what it is, even if you were 100 percent in the wrong,
you still can kind of just click two buttons and the feedbacks automatically gone.
Now, eBay has kind of changed over the years.
Used to be able to call in, get feedback removed.
They kind of always sided with the seller.
That kind of has changed, I think, over the past six to six to 12 months.
Now they're more it's more harder times to get rid of negative feedback,
even if you as a seller did the right thing.
eBay still now kind of just I don't know,
for some reason, they just want the feedback to be there.
And now they think they allow like photos for feedback on eBay as well.
I think feedback overall, personally, I don't even care.
I'm going to be straight up with you.
I don't have one hundred and fifty five positive feedback on Amazon.
And I've been doing this for over five years.
I don't think it matters at all.
I don't know the implications of getting a negative feedback on eBay because I'm
not I don't understand that business, but I do think I've heard people talk
about if you do get a negative feedback on eBay, they can kind of throttle down
the views, your store. I don't know, Johnny, maybe you have more insight on this.
Right.
So it affects your seller rating and that affects your money.
So if you go, there's tears of it.
There is above standard, below standard and standard.
And a couple of others.
Let me do a quick Google while I ramble here.
Seller ratings and basically if you go below standard,
I think you get hit monetarily like bill whole look, it's like a 20 percent fee.
I don't know. I've never been in that fun little statistic.
They've always been above standard.
So there is penalties if you're an eBay seller.
Monetarily penalties.
Yeah.
And I think if you get too many, they can technically suspend your account or ask
you to take a walk like if you're if you're just taking money and not mailing
your packages, I mean, there's some people that have tried that
and they've had a short stint on their eBay career.
And basically, it's really hard to get them removed these days.
It used to be a lot easier.
And originally it was like the hardest,
like you did not want to feed back with a huge deal
because it was it's always a he said versus you said kind of scenario.
Well, who's giving eBay money and who's
eBay going to side with in that kind of scenario?
Who's got the money?
Well, the customers got the money, honestly.
That doesn't mean customers can't be at a line or outroute liars,
but you doing the matlock work to prove over the Internet and or phone
that the customer is a liar or misinformed or they're not an expert.
I'm not an expert.
And you customer service representative are not an expert,
but you're the arbiter of the dispute here.
What say you?
It's really hard on eBay.
I think it's way more difficult.
Amazon land is literally click a button and it goes away.
It doesn't. I don't think it matters.
Other performance metrics do matter, like delivering on time and all that.
If you're on the merchant fulfilled side, I think matter a whole lot more
at the site, I don't think anything really matters.
But on FBM, it's very similar to eBay.
I think they have even similar metrics
for delivery and damage and handling returns and all that.
So they're very comparable in that sense.
Now.
It gets really hinky when, oh, I made a mistake.
The customer is absolutely right.
There's been very few instances in my reselling career where that's been the case.
Like I've misshipped books.
I sent book A to customer B and customer B book to customer A.
Whoops. That kind of happens.
And that is you're on the chopping block to get two bad things happen to you
until you can resolve that if you choose to resolve that.
Some people say, now here's a refund.
Take a walk customer, which is fine.
That can be resolved.
Customer gets the money back.
You both have wasted each.
Well, you have wasted the customer's time
and more importantly, your own time when that happens because you didn't pay
attention, actually had this happen recently.
But finally enough, most customers are.
Wanting to ship the books back and get the right books, they're willing to mail
it back, which is a hard thing to do because getting to correspond hard.
But neither one of them has done it yet.
I don't know if they're both reading the books or this decided they just wanted
to complain at me like I got the wrong book.
I have no idea what's going on there, but it was it was one of those.
I woke up three in the morning, decided to go to work.
First thing I did was ship a packages and I messed up, honestly happens.
So what about your eBay career?
Have you had some customer interactions there after the products been shipped
and something went awry?
I've done the same thing you recently did, and mine was for much larger,
more expensive products.
I sent VCR DVD combos for some reason,
Stars Aligned, and I sold two within the same day.
And the wrong one went to the wrong person and the other one went to the other person.
And I just said, keep them.
Here's a refund.
I go the route of least resistance.
I don't take your money.
Keep the stuff.
I don't want it back.
I do think the customer is always right, even if they are wrong,
because without customers, the business doesn't exist.
And when I was at CVS, I remember I started out of stores, a store manager
and all my shift supervisors, they were just sticklers, right?
They didn't want to honor coupon.
They don't want to do this, do that.
It took forever for me to get through their big skulls that if they go
and complain, they're going to get 10x what we would just give them for their dollar
coupon, they're going to get a twenty five dollar gift card.
I got to call them personally.
It becomes this huge headache.
But for some reason, we as resellers, I don't I mean, I guess this kind of takes
part. This is this this is a hot take.
And I don't even know if I want to say this out loud, but this is why.
All right. This is why resellers take offense to customers having issues
and want refunds, because resellers are broke people, Johnny.
And the twenty dollar item that they sold, they already spent that twenty dollars
before it even sat in their bank account for one day.
And that is why resellers have problems with this stuff.
I could care less.
A refund to refund.
If you have ever been involved in any type of business, any business in the universe
accounts for shrink shrink is things that magically disappear from the shelves.
Well, in a business space, you have to account for returns.
We sell on Amazon to returns.
You can return anything for any reason on Amazon.
Twenty five years later.
Why are we getting so upset over refunds, even if we know we are in in the right?
Right. And we're going to cover some of our
feedback on Amazon and it's not that we can control.
So and if it is something you can control at the end of the day, it's just a refund.
Are you like, why do we pull our hair out
and go crazy when we get a negative feedback and you know that the item was
in there and they say it didn't show up? Well, you can't control that.
Right.
Why are we worried about things we can control?
If somebody is there's plenty of miserable people out there.
So if somebody is miserable and they just are having a bad day and want to leave
a stupid negative feedback, you can't control that even if you know
you're in the right. So why why get all worked up about it?
I could care less about refunds on Amazon.
And if you compare the refund rate to Amazon, eBay, Simon Close, I mean, Amazon.
Every time I go to drop off my boxes every week, Johnny, there's like a line of like
30 people with Amazon returns.
I've seen a dude that's got like the same pair of sneaks and like six different
sizes because he just said, I'm going to buy six, see what won't fit me.
Then I'll send back the other five.
This is the reality of reselling.
And if you accept that returns and pleasing the customers, a part of the
business, no matter whether they're right or wrong, you're going to you're just going
to take off. You're not going to be worried about all the little things that people get.
But it's because a lot of people, they need that twenty dollars,
hundred dollars sale, and sometimes it's a more expensive item.
And if you don't have the money in your bank account to kind of cover it,
then it stings a lot more than somebody like me or you would just like, hey,
you know, we operate this like a business.
There's a column in the PNL that says, all right, this is refunds.
This is money. We basically are just writing off every single year because things happen.
All right. Before we go on Amazon stuff,
I'm going to go over the detail seller ratings of what I got on my feedback.
So there's four categories that customers can leave feedback for on eBay land.
Accurate description, reasonable shipping costs, shipping speed and communication.
So I got to write around right around a thousand here.
Keep in mind, I've been doing one eBay listing this year since I said way to
Amazon, so that's why it's only a thousand. Sorry.
Loser. I know. Right.
So we'll start from my most starred one.
They do a five star metric thing.
I have five stars across the board,
but shipping speed is number one and five hundred and fifty eight people rating me
there. Number two is communication, which is five hundred and fifty seven.
Accurate descriptions, five hundred and forty one.
I put a lot of description in my description, so I'm a little shocked that it's
not on the higher end like the other two.
And my lowest one, because I actually charge shipping for my media is five
hundred and thirty three. But again, everybody gave me five stars across
the board on this. But those are the four things the customer
will eat eBay thinks the customer would care about.
I send a message to every customer with the tracking number.
That's why I probably my communication
so high that I actually correspond with it. eBay does this automatically.
But I do a little extra like here's your tracking number, here's your book.
And please subscribe to my story and more books kind of deal.
Shipping speed makes sense to me because I use ground advantage.
I don't use slow poke media mail. Also, I get insurance with it up to 100 bucks.
Most of my books are under one hundred dollars, so that made sense for me.
Reasonable shipping cost.
Well, I charge more than your typical shipping costs.
So that's the reason it's probably the lowest rated there, which is fine.
But again, five stars across the board.
I'm cool with this eBay. Thanks.
I want to cover some feedback that I've gotten on Amazon and
listen, these are going to be ones that like you can't control.
Right. So I got one.
So Amazon's a one to five star rating.
And like we said, we everything you're going to hear here.
We've got struck out by Amazon because they strike everything out.
If you do FBA, they just take responsibility.
So I got one that says my worst purchase in my history with Amazon.
So I literally all the items this person's bought my book or actually was a DVD.
It was the worst purchase they've ever had with Amazon.
Vendor said the book was in good condition.
It was in poor condition.
Owners gone, rips, et cetera.
It was not in good condition.
I would have liked to have received it.
I ordered Charlotte's Web, but the movie inside was Magic Puppy.
Probably. I mean, I probably mistaken the DVD that was inside or I didn't even look.
This one says, guess you forgot to mention that disk was missing for Lion King 2.
And then they wrote in capital letters, jerk, J.E.R.K.
None of this stuff affects me.
Me and Johnny were looking at some of the more some of the more vulgar ones before
the call and you can't take this stuff to heart.
And I understand it's your business and like, oh, I want to be the perfect superstar.
You're never going to be able to please everybody.
And without customers, you don't exist.
So whether you like it or not, the customer is always right.
And I'm always happy to give a full refund.
Even if I know I ship them the exact item, I'm going to refund them.
They can send it back or I will tell them to keep it.
And this is a hard pill.
I think people I think we as resellers think everybody's out there to scam us.
Like everybody's a scammer, Johnny.
Everybody that has a problem with what they order is a scammer.
And I'll tell you right now, I bought I bought
some vegan jerky on eBay about two weeks ago.
Right. I go there for my jerky because I can get it for cheap.
Well, I order it. I pay.
Right. Well, I send an offer.
And now you got to like accept to pay if they accept the offer.
So I pay it. He steps you off.
I'm like, oh, yeah, I got a box of jerky coming my way for 30 bucks.
Right.
And then like three days later, I just get refunded out of the blue.
And it's like the seller says that they don't have the product or item anymore.
So I'm just like, to me as a customer, I got no message from the seller.
I got nothing back.
I just think to myself like, who knows, they probably ate the jerky and then
forgot to take the listing down, but like even as a buyer, there's going to be
things where you just maybe because I'm a reseller, I just accepted it more.
It's not like I reached out.
I was like, yo, dude, what you doing with my jerky?
I'm just like, it is what it is.
I mean, we live in times where everybody has so much going on.
We're getting pulled in a million different directions.
And there's a lot more we can get bent out of shape and just stupid feedback.
And even if you know you're right,
who cares, appreciate the fact you have a business where you can sell things online
from the comfort of your home and make tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars
doing it, one refund, one negative feedback, 10 negative feedback.
Just keep on moving. I don't let it bother me.
I think it's honest.
I'm to the point now where I think it's more funny than it is degrading or like
offensive to me. I'm just like, let's see what this crazy person has to say,
because my rating on Amazon goes from 100 percent.
And when it ain't 100 percent, I know I got I got a good joke cooking up
for me when I go to the feedback tab.
I was just going to let you go,
I was going to let you go and see how long I was going to go for.
Well, luckily, Zoom, like, lets me know when, hey, you're you're muted, jerk.
You need to unmute to actually be heard.
So I got one I'm going to go over and it did affect me.
But I was not in the wrong on this, but it did.
Well, let's just tug at the heartstrings a little bit.
So I'm going to go ahead and read it for everybody.
I was shocked when the package came.
I wanted it to I wanted to gift it to a friend with a terminal disease.
The jacket is torn and there is actually
someone's return address label posted on a page inside.
So guys got a friend who's dying and wanted to give him a gift.
I felt bad because, well, I didn't do anything wrong because all my books I
send in are used, he should have bought a new book,
but he probably went with the cheapest option or just did the add to cart to page
and thought he was going to get a new item.
And that's part of the thing with Amazon.
I don't think the customer base there really understands how Amazon works.
So they see the buy box add to cart,
especially if they're on mobile and everything's really small.
You can't it's not really detail like it is on desktop.
They don't know any better.
And they're just assuming they're going to get a brand new shiny item.
And when they don't, they're sad.
In this case, it's extra sad because guys got a friend who's dying.
That's the only one I really kind of felt bad on.
But again, I didn't do anything wrong.
The customer just had a user error kind of deal or unaware, ignorant kind of error.
I got a reference I want to bring up here.
Some of the mega media sellers on eBay, they use stock photos for used items.
I personally, I had to complete a book set to sell it and I had to buy one.
And the cheapest one was I think was Thrift Books.
And it's just a stock photo of the trade paperback, right?
Brand new. The stock photo is a brand new.
It's not beat up or anything.
The mega sellers could care less about the customer experience and they still
exist on the platforms, right, like they don't care.
It's just a stock new photo of the book.
And I order it pre-owned, used.
You have no idea what is going to show up.
But these people make tens, hundreds of thousand dollars in sales every single
month and they're not getting banned, they're not getting canned.
Well, that's because they're mega seller and they get all this feedback.
Well, I challenge you to become the seller that sells more items and gets more
positive feedback. So when you do get hit with a negative,
you just keep the ball moving. You're really not worried about it.
But that's the reality of it out there.
Like I had no idea.
And I'll tell you right now, when I got the book, it wasn't in the best condition.
They shipped it in like a crappy little cardboard paper mailer.
So they really didn't even care.
And I'm just like, well, this is how the game is out there.
This is what it's doing.
You either get with it or not.
And people just lose weeks, days, months,
years of their life to negative feedback because it's a personal attack.
Like Johnny probably didn't sleep for the past week.
Once he read that feedback, that was it for him.
Yeah.
And I got one that I was almost in tears laughing at that was a negative.
And it happened recently.
Nine twenty six twenty four.
I don't know when this podcast is coming out,
but to me it was just a couple of weeks ago.
So it starts with comments, colon.
My guess is that he has a sheet open and he's just going down his negative
feedback and I'm just one of many here. Book delivered with no packaging,
just a shipping label sticker slapped in the front cover and dropped in the mail.
I had to meticulously peel it off to avoid ruining the cover and then scrub off
the adhesive residue.
I've never received a product mail with such disregard.
So Amazon took a book.
OK, book, I need to make you go.
I'm not going to put you in a box.
I'm not going to put you in a mail bubble mailer.
Slap a label on. Good to go.
Let's drop it in the mail just like that.
And you can mail stuff like that.
If it's lost, it's got a mailing label.
It goes.
But that was just hysterical to me, like no,
no shit's given at Amazon land, essentially.
And they're just like getting through the day.
Like I can imagine the poor Amazon
workers the last 30 minutes of the shift, he's got a package.
I don't care.
I don't care. Slap sticker on, mail it done.
I actually got a merchant fulfilled return that was like that because I remember
taking the photo many, many years ago and the person just took it to the UPS store
and the UPS store just stuck the return label right on the front cover of the book.
Like I remember getting it and I'm just laughing like these.
We live in a crazy times.
I want to look at it the other way, though,
because we talked about how negative feedback can like damper your ability
to possibly get more sales or higher fees on eBay.
But positive feedback doesn't guarantee you more sales.
Right. It's not like so it's kind of.
And this is it's such a hot topic for me
because I know a lot of people that listen to this.
And it's not that I don't take pride in my business.
I just worry about things that matter in the business and feedback isn't one of them.
So for me, I'm just like, well, customers always right, whether you work in retail,
whether you have a business, you can account for refunds,
you can account for shrink when it comes to items that are damaged, lost in the mail.
And if you don't do that and you get bent out of shape over one refund,
and I hate to tell you, then you're not operating like a real business.
It shouldn't it shouldn't affect your daily mindset.
It shouldn't affect your your business
actions when you do run into one of these negative feedbacks.
And they're always going to be there.
You're always going to get somebody.
There's always going to be something.
Even if you do everything perfect, you can do everything in perfect order.
You can put candies in there.
You can put dollar bills in there.
They still will leave you negative feedback when you run into that person
who's just a miserable person to deal with every day or the occasional scammer.
I'm not sitting here saying, you know, there's no scammers out there.
There's plenty of them out there,
especially in the Amazon space.
I think that's a OK.
And you're going to get scammed eventually in your reselling career.
And maybe that's another box you check off to know that you made it in reselling
is when you get scammed and somebody sends you back like a rock instead of the iPhone.
It's just it's too much emphasis on feedback.
And I hate to break it to you, but the customers always rate.
So I ain't got customers, Johnny.
I don't exist and I don't feel like going back to a job.
So the customer is always right.
I don't care if they're even wrong in my mind.
Give them their money back.
You know what? And this is the big thing with Amazon.
Why has it?
Why is big reason Amazon is the huge mega platform of the universe?
Because, Johnny, the customer is always right.
You can refund and get your money back three years later after you wore the tidy
white as you bought, stained them up, you can send them back to Amazon three years
later and they will happily give you your money back.
And that is the main reason Amazon dominates.
I agree with that.
And you got me thinking with what you were saying there, Amazon,
the customer shopping with Amazon on eBay, the customer shopping with you,
the person, because on eBay we try to get repeat customers on Amazon.
That's not really a thing.
Does it happen every so often that I'll get two orders from the same customer?
Yeah, but it's not like eBay because they actually have metrics to show you how
many repeat buyers you have.
So if you have a bad experience on eBay with a customer,
you may lose that person's repeat business.
And how many hundreds or thousands of dollars does that rack up on on the course
of that person's career shopping with you because they don't like what you have
or you misrepresent yourself or your item or you provide poor communication?
They're going to go shop with somebody else because you know why they can they can.
There is plenty of other sellers on eBay
who are more than likely selling very similar items to your own,
maybe not exact, but very similar, and they could just move their business
down the road.
So it's kind of like retail online, honestly.
If you don't like the hardware store,
I, the customer, is going to drive 20 extra minutes to go to the hardware store
that treats me right kind of deal versus treating me wrong.
And the other thing is I see this pretty early on with new sellers on eBay.
They get so mad. They get furious with the customer how they wronged them.
It's not personal.
Whatever happened, the customer thinks they are justified.
And it's your job to agree with them.
Great. So you're on the same page.
It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong.
But B, have a resolution.
Make that customer happy again, because right now they aren't happy.
And you getting mad and you typing up a three paragraph essay on how they're
wrong in every conceivable way is not the play.
Now, when the customer is completely,
clearly wrong, you have to, again, be very delicate and explain very tactfully
how they are wrong for when you go to eBay to try to get that negative feedback
removed, because if eBay sees you being disrespectful,
they're going to side with the customer.
But if they've seen you on every attempt to resolve the issue with the customer,
customer experience, they're going to side with you.
And they're probably going to make whatever happened, negative feedback go away.
Not 100 percent of the time.
There's a there's a weird thing with agent, seller to that's what we should talk
about next. Me, the seller, tried to deal with the agent,
customer support, because some of those guys are real jerks, too.
But no, you just have to do everything you can to make it better.
Once that's done, well,
things are just simply out of your control.
I've never had a call eBay for negative feedback.
And I got like almost 600 feedback on my eBay account.
And I don't list there anymore, but it still exists in case, you know,
the day comes and I have to go back.
But I don't have any experience calling in and dealing with these people.
But I just feel like, man, Johnny, if you told me, Mike, here,
call these people and sit on the phone for 30 minutes an hour and deal with
getting this one feedback, I think myself,
how many other productive things can I be doing?
Like how many items can I list in the time it takes me to cry to somebody and plead
my case like I'm on trial for murder just to get this feedback removed?
Because I feel like I'm in the right or in the wrong.
I would almost argue that you're better off listing more items than trying to get
a negative feedback removed on eBay anymore.
I mean, you're better off financially,
technically, but again, if you got too many of those that rack up,
that could turn customers away because customers do look at your seller profile
because again, they fear they're going to get scammed.
I'm not talking about the little old lady who's his first time on eBay.
She don't know any better.
She's not going to look at that stuff.
But the repeat eBay shopper who shops for their wardrobe on eBay,
they're going to look at your feedback and they're like, OK, this person looks legit.
I'm going to order my pair of jeans from them.
And I would also say.
Because in my other group, there's a ton of clothing sellers.
They have so many customer service things they got to do because it's not like a book
or CD or DVD where you flip it open, it works.
You put in the player just works right clothes.
That's a whole new ballgame.
Doesn't fit right because either you gain weight and you're lying to yourself
or you lost weight and you're lying to yourself or it's too long or it's too short
or I don't like how it feels or it doesn't look cute on me.
They have all these other variables.
They got to think about with their business and their return.
They got to deal with returns on a daily active basis.
And I feel bad for the clothing sellers because me.
I don't have to do
like they just read their book.
They just put it in the DVD or CD player.
And most of the time on the CD and DVD, it just works on books.
You may have the occasional page fell out.
Whoops, because I don't go page by page checking.
I do a quick flip.
If no pages fall out, book good to go, essentially,
or the spines crack and it's on its last little limbs.
It could barely survive one read.
That probably shouldn't be something I should list in the first place.
And again, that's on me, not the customer.
I think and we talked about this, how eBay should have higher standards.
I think they came out with a clear cut standard, right?
Because we look at Amazon.
If you're selling stuff yourself, merchant fulfilled, right,
you list that you package, ship it from your home.
Amazon don't play no games.
They give you two day max handling time
and they track your on time delivery rate.
So just because you decide to go drop it at the post office and the post office
doesn't get there in time, you still get dinged for that.
And if you get dinged a handful of times, I'm not talking a hundred times,
I'm talking 10 times, they will shut your ability to sell merchant
fulfilled on Amazon down immediately.
But they set that clear expectation.
And I think that would benefit eBay if they had something like this in place,
because why do we have things where the handling time is, you know, a week, two
weeks that should not exist, anybody that shops online.
I'm not buying the bulk drops to get them in two weeks, Johnny.
I need them today. I need them tomorrow.
Well, they do that because resellers have lives and they want to take a vacation
or they're sick and they need to get their goblet removed.
Legit cases there.
You turn your store off.
You don't move your hand.
They have that option.
But most people opt the other way because they can still get sales.
Customer doesn't know any better.
But I got a funny eBay or I'm sorry, Amazon story.
Guy, my other group, I'm not going to say his name, respect his privacy,
but he told me a very hilarious story about Amazon.
He does a lot of merchants
and he had an issue with flooding and all of his packages.
Well, it got flooded.
His whole his whole area got flooded.
So he called Amazon, explained the situation.
I think it had to do with the hurricane.
And they're like, we don't care.
And you ship your packages.
And like, well, I can't.
They've been water damaged.
Amazon still doesn't care.
And they actually had him write
a thing after he missed the shipping window because he refused to ship those
out as he should, and they had him write a thing after that.
After all the feedback rolled in that how he would not have that happen again.
He's thinking to himself, I cannot control the weather,
but I'm going to do what Amazon says.
So he wrote it up. They accepted it.
He moved on with this business.
But in my mind, it's like, come on, you can't control the weather in that
situation and Amazon doesn't care. They don't care.
You ship those packages.
Would he have been better off to have shipped them?
Question mark. I don't think so.
The kind of feedback you would have gotten if he had, I think, would have been way
more damaging than while he just didn't ship the item kind of feedback.
Yeah, it's they don't care.
They have business expectations, regardless.
If a twister comes and picks you up and you wake up in the land of Oz, they still
expect you to call somebody that's not in the land of Oz to get your stuff shipped
on time, right? Like if a tornado rolled through here and I had a big merchant
operation going books are everywhere, maybe never see them again.
And I call Amazon.
I guarantee you they're going to tell me the same thing.
Ship your packages. I'm like, I can't.
I don't know where they are.
The twister took them away.
You need to be like the guy in the Twisters movie and he's his truck.
What he does, he drives in a tornado and he's got like a button he hits.
And it's got like drills that go underneath the truck to keep them.
So you can drive into the tornado, drill your truck down, get your packages, ship
all the books are in little chains.
It's like it's crazy when we have the conversation, right?
Like Amazon expects you to ship it no matter what, no matter what, no matter what.
But there's no there's no excuses that's going to suffice.
They're not even excuses.
They're legitimate things that life happens.
We all know life happens.
But they still say, hey, this is what we expect.
No matter what you got going on, here's what we need you to do for us.
And it's it's all a balancing act when it comes to.
Keeping a customer satisfied, not getting
bent out of shape about feedback and understanding that the customers are
the reason we have the business as we do, I wish I could just be like, hey,
you know, for the people that leave me the negative feedback, so she can be like,
hey, you know, you suck, too, right?
Like you called me a jerk.
No, you're a jerk.
Like, I don't care that your kid didn't get the Lion King to second this.
Like I made a mistake and we make mistakes.
Nobody's perfect.
You can try to be as perfect as you want.
And that's another thing.
You're always going to sooner or later,
you're going to get jammed up with somebody that's not going to think what you did is
perfect so you can try your damnedest to be like, I'm going to pack things perfectly.
I'm going to overdo everything.
So I never get a negative feedback.
It might work for a while, but sooner or later you're going to get one.
And how you handle it is it's huge to like the mindset of the business.
Like you just I don't know, dude, like when you were heavy into eBay,
I mean, have you ever gotten you've gotten negative feedback?
So you've called to get them removed, right?
I've gotten them removed with a few I've gotten.
So as far as what's reflected on the Internet, perfect score didn't go
my permanent record McFly. Yeah, yeah.
It's like you get pulled over into cops like, well, Mr.
Johnny, I see you got a negative feedback on eBay.
You're definitely getting this ticket.
Yeah, I mean, it's a arduous process.
And again, you have to justify it to eBay on why.
But it's gotten harder because today
mainly eBay saying, well, that's the customer experience.
So that's hardball now.
Like, how can you fight a customer experience?
That's the experience they had tends to be the marching band mantra
of what eBay saying these days.
Can you still do it?
Yes, but it is nightmarishly hard to do.
Like you've got to prove that they are
misinformed somehow some way
and.
You have evidence somehow some way like you got to matlock your way in convincing
the customer that they are wrong and you got to trick them essentially.
I have to deal with the customer and I shall be right back.
All right. Well, I mean, I think with eBay, with the feedback,
if you have to get it removed and go through all the hoops and steps.
I think eBay should be more reasonable,
I guess, with the sellers, because it is the individual person packing
the item and you can prove it. The big difference with Amazon is Amazon
accepts the fact that they like pack and ship all of our items.
So I guess it works for sellers because
if Amazon's handling everything, then we can automatically get it
struck through, right. It's automatic.
But eBay kind of sees it from the other side is, well, you guys are handling
everything, you girls are handling everything.
So then it's going to be harder to get the
feedback removed because you as a seller, you are in charge of start to finish
the photos, the product, the shipping, everything.
But in Amazon, they say, OK, well, we're in charge of the photos and the catalog.
Right. We're in charge of shipping it.
And in a timely manner, getting the pack, getting the sent out to you,
getting it to you within prime, which is two days.
We all know Amazon gets backed up.
Some things take a lot longer than two days.
So when we do get a negative feedback,
even if it's something that we did miss, right, like I had the disk that I didn't
check and I was missing the second disk or I put the other DVD inside the case,
they still just accept the fact that, OK, well, this is our responsibility.
So we're not going to fight with the sellers that have feedback removed.
We're just going to strike everything out and say, hey, we take responsibility.
But on eBay, they see it as well.
You took the photos.
You made the description.
You packed it to the customer.
You shipped it to the customer.
So if you get a negative feedback,
we're going to be more of a pain in your side than we otherwise would be.
I think it is justified.
And sure, for every scammer, there's ninety nine people that aren't scamming.
But either way, I don't think I think there's so many more productive things
you can worry about in your business, especially the eBay business,
than just worrying about, oh, my feedback, my feedback rating, my feedback rating,
my feedback rate. I think it honestly, you know, even an eBay
and if I list something, I get negative feedback.
I'm not going to lose an ounce of sleep and I rarely get feedback.
And I would just challenge somebody to just do more productive things and, hey,
accept the fact that this is the way eBay is going.
And unfortunately, if you don't like it, there's the door.
It's shameless. Suck it up, buttercuck or go sell on Macari and get less sales.
That's all it comes down to.
If you don't like the platform and how they handle your feedback and you're
going to be that much of a big whiny baby about getting a negative feedback,
here you go. You can go sell.
Come to Amazon, from the Amazon land where you're going to get returns.
The return rate on Amazon is ninety nine percent.
You never make any money.
But hey, your feedback can be 100 percent because you can get everything struck
through. You want money or you want feedback?
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to go with the money.
Honestly, I just like money.
Yeah, I can't harken enough.
Do not take the feedback personally.
You don't even worry about it if you're on Amazon.
But if you're on eBay, it's a little bit more impactful because you work really
hard, you work a lot of hours and the work involved.
You're a little bit more closer to it
versus just chucking it in a box and sitting on its merry way to Amazon.
You took photos of this thing.
You looked at this thing probably as you were listing it.
So you're a little bit more attached to the item.
You think you did a good job, but you missed something.
And out of the one out of a thousand things you missed and that one sells and then
feedback happens and you're in the wrong because you missed something.
It's hard not to be snarky with it.
It's hard not to take it personally.
It's hard not to feel bad because I work so hard.
I self defeated myself kind of deal.
So just go with the program and move on and continue listing more items, essentially.
Fight the good fight if you're able to.
If you're not, just take it on the chin and move forward.
I'm going to put you in the hot seat since you're you're my eBay guy and you deal
with all eBay sellers, so we'll see if you're going to lose any friends over this.
My goal is to have you lose all your eBay friends just by hot topics on eBay.
So if you are responsible for photos, descriptions, packing, shipping,
making sure it gets to the customer in a timely manner on eBay,
you think eBay's new system of not removing negative feedbacks is justified.
That's interesting.
I think.
If they didn't have that customer experience in there, it would be if it's legit
and they're playing hardball like you made a mistake, we're putting it on your
permanent record fine, and I think eBay would actually be a little bit more.
Transparent, easier to read on a good seller versus a bad seller in that regard
versus before you can make tons of mistakes and get them.
You can go agent shopping, get them removed.
So I think in that respect, it would be a fantastic thing.
The fact that they have the customer
experience there and the customer experience could be whatever they can pull
out of their willy nilly head makes it kind of irrelevant.
It's kind of a wash in that regard,
and it makes good sellers look more bad than they should, in my opinion.
So I don't think their current feedback under the current feedback policy and
system, I don't think it's great, so I can't really endorse it fully.
But it's better than it was.
And eBay.
Sellers had to pay a little bit more attention, I think.
Yeah, and maybe they should have like
a late night court show with eBay sellers that try to plead their case to get the
feedback removed, right? Like we got them like the Zoom call and it's like the
customer and it's the seller and we're going to find out today whether or not
this feedback is going to be removed because I mean, honestly, I think.
All right. Here's another one for you.
Do you think eBay cares more about their customers or their sellers?
I already answered earlier is the
customers because the customers got the money, the sellers just have the items.
You need both, but who's giving the actual dollar bills?
It's going to be the customer.
I'm sorry.
I don't care what kind of subscription model eBay has.
That is dwarfed by the amount of dollars a customer will spend on an annual basis
with eBay. Yeah, I agree, because think about it.
Right. You see the eBay commercials and I've been seeing a lot of these lately.
The eBay clothing commercial.
They pay to promote people to come to their site to shop, not to sell.
Right. They don't say, hey, come sell on eBay and make all this money.
They say, hey, come shop on our site and buy things.
Customers are what matters at the end of the day.
And believe it or not, a lot of sellers can go away on these platforms
and these platforms wouldn't lose no sleep.
You think they care?
A lot of these platforms have a small group of mega sellers that produce
the majority of the sales.
It's kind of like the business idea where,
you know, 99 percent of your money comes from 20 percent of your inventory or
whatever the analogy is when it comes to the money.
I think it's the same way with the sellers.
I think the platforms have a small group of super mega sellers that make the
majority of the money on the site.
And yes, there's a lot of other little trickle down sellers like me and you and
people that do this hobby part time, full time.
They could care less.
I was listening to a interesting book
podcast, well, it was more of a video, it wasn't a podcast, but
he was talking about how he has a gigantic store and a lot of inventory.
And his back in the days, other bookseller friends went the other route.
They went the luxury antiquarian books.
You know what?
He's still in business and they're gone.
So to your point of huge mega sellers,
I think huge mega sellers is the play versus your smaller really care.
Two hundred dollar items do I think a because there's plenty of rare antique
bookstores that are still around today.
Sure.
But by and large, it's a harder game, I think, for those guys to play than your
volume sellers and the amount of money a volume seller is going to get is going to
be amazing. Like, I don't even want to know how much half price books makes.
I don't want to know.
And they're brick and mortar or how much money
the buyback your book programs make, how much money are those guys clearing?
Honestly, it hurts my feelings because I'm not there.
Yeah, it is true, though.
Right. You have to cater to the platforms have to cater.
And think about it from, say, you listening out there had a reselling platform
and 10 percent of your sellers accounted for 90 percent of the sales on your
platform. Well, then they should get 90 percent of your attention.
And then the other 90 percent of sellers should only get 10 percent of your
attention. And that's the reality of the reselling platforms.
And you can be as big as you want.
You can be as small as you want.
As long as you accept the fact you are who you are, you'll be fine either way.
You're the person doesn't care about the customer or the feedback.
You'll be OK.
You're the person wants to use stock photos.
You'll be OK as long as you can sleep at night.
No, I'm I get a feedback that says book wasn't as described.
Who cares? Just keep keep.
I don't know. It's it's hard for me because I come off like I am.
I don't come off. I I could care less.
Like I straight up could care less if I get a negative feedback.
Johnny, like it's it's it's 100 percent.
It's a laughable line.
I'm going to go read when I see that I have a negative feedback versus it being
like, oh, my God, like, what am I going to do?
Or like, oh, it's I just have a different right in this.
You can't be. We're company men.
We have to do what the company says.
If the company says click the button to make it go away.
Well, you and I are going to click the button to make it go away.
We're not going to go out of our way to.
Hey, customer, I know that book you sent didn't have a dust jacket,
even though my condition is to clear, said, go ahead and send it.
We don't play that game because we have an ability to make it go away.
Amazon embraces this because they want quick customer service.
They want it resolved.
They don't want it long and drawn out.
So it's kind of like customer support metrics.
When you call in customer support, they want to get you off that phone as quickly
as you can. It's all about the turnover rate.
And you know what? If we're going to work with that company,
we got to play by that company's rules.
We can't fight the good fight.
We are on a moral quest of rightness.
We are in a moral quest of making money.
And if the company says turn it over, we're going to turn it over.
Yeah, you're right. And I think reselling people make it a lot more personal than
it has to be. And I think the idea that me and you have detached any type
of emotional connection to the products we sell is one of the attributing factors
that we've gone to the point where we're at with our businesses,
because it's not personal, right? Like it is what it is.
They're just things we throw labels on and put them in a box.
And some of them come back.
Some of them don't. Most of them don't come back.
Some of them do. We get feedback.
Who cares? You keep moving, go find more products, list more products,
make more money. Feedback just doesn't play a part.
And the customer is always right. I don't care.
I don't care if you sent them a brand new, perfectly sealed, guaranteed,
sealed widget, no matter what it is.
And no stamp of approval kind of deal.
Yeah. Right. Like I think about people because eBay has the like
like where they rarefied like authenticity.
Yeah. Yeah. So like you sell in that category like shoes, right?
You sell the thousand dollar pair of shoes.
Someone orders a size nine. Right.
It gets goes to eBay.
They pay somebody to authenticate it, goes to the customer and you still get
returns, right? You did everything right.
And the feedback could say, hey, you know, these didn't seem legitimate.
What are you going to do about it?
It's not like you're going to you.
Are you going to get the money anyway?
It's not like you're going to call eBay and be like, hey, I was right.
I still want that thousand dollars for them shoes.
They're going to tell you to go pay on sand.
They're going to they won't even tell you that.
So just hang up the phone on you, because that's what I would do.
Uh huh. Exactly.
This is we got to play by their rules and whatever the rules say,
we got to do essentially.
And again, I mean, I like I read that one feedback earlier.
Like I felt I was a little bothered by that.
I felt bad for this story that wasn't even a factor of my business brain.
But I can imagine the story playing out here.
Friend, he opens his birthday gift and it's got the stuff in there.
And he's all sad, right?
That's a sad story that is legitimately sad.
And I played a part in that in the grand scheme of being a company man.
But again, I got to move on.
I can't dwell on it.
I can't try to resolve it.
There's no I don't even think there's a way for me to resolve it on FBA.
And I just click the button and move on.
Got struck through, right?
I don't it's a body ties.
There's not even another human being checking these things.
It's running its parameter script and it's going, yes, no.
And majority of the time, it's yes, strike it through.
I think there should be something like in order to get a refund,
I bet a lot of these sucker crybaby resellers would like this.
I did in order to get a refund for one of my products.
I need a five paragraph essay explaining exactly why.
And if your story isn't doesn't make me shed a tear,
then you're not getting a refund because that's what a lot of this stuff is.
People some people feel like they got to leave like this crazy story
or like this crazy reason why just to get a refund when it's just you just hit
refund and it's going through. Right.
It's this idea.
The same thing with eBay sellers that have no refunds turned on.
Like you think just because you got no refunds turned on and a customer has an
issue with the product that eBay is going to be like, unfortunately customer,
we're not going to side with you.
No, eBay is going to say, here's your refund.
Here you go seller that says you have no refunds.
We're still taking that money back out of your account.
And it's funny on Amazon, I'm pretty sure.
And if you call in as a customer and ask for a refund or an exchange,
they'll do it for you.
So they're they're like, okay, seller, you click your button and move on.
Okay, buyer, you've called in.
Now here's your money problem solved.
Again, they're all about that quick turnover.
They're going to resolve it, resolve it, resolve it.
They don't got time to mess around and analyze and again, do some Matlock murder.
She wrote Colombo detective stuff.
No time for that.
They're running a evil billionaire empire that I'm glad to be a part of.
Oh, that's so true.
Why do you think Amazon has their own delivery drivers?
Because USPS sucks.
So we want to get ourselves to the customer in two days.
So the customer comes back, signs up for our subscription,
buys an infinite amount of stuff with money they can't afford,
just click on the buy now button.
It is a magical thing when you focus on the customer.
Look what happens.
You say, hey, we don't care.
You get your stuff.
They got these facilities in these large cities.
You order within an hour.
It's at your front door because the customer is what matters.
Right.
I think up until recently, it was free returns to Amazon.
I think they take a 5% restock fee from the customer these days,
but I'm going to give you one.
I don't know if I've talked about this before,
but Amazon owns Audible and they give you a token to try it out.
However, for any reason you could think of,
if you call in, say, I didn't like the book,
they'll give you another free token.
So you can, in theory, listen to infinite audio books.
Now, whether you want to sacrifice your moral integrity to do that,
that's up to you.
I'm not here to play judge, jury, executioner.
That's Amazon.
But apparently, if they're cool with it,
well, I guess they're cool with it.
I don't know.
I don't know if you could still do that,
but you used to be able to do that if you were that way.
And I don't know if they made money or lost money on their Audible program,
but the fact that you could do that,
and this is publicly known is the only reason I mentioned it.
It's nothing that's hidden that the secret black hats don't want you to talk about.
It's publicly known.
It's on forums.
There's plenty of YouTube things and articles about this whole thing.
But that, again, Amazon focuses on the customer experience, just like that.
Any complaint, any reason, you're right, customer.
I agree.
You know what, customer?
You want your money back?
Here you go.
You want your token back?
Here you go.
Please continue to do business with us.
That's what they're doing.
Continue to do business with us.
They aren't taking their business across the road to eBay.
Well, some of them are.
They're not taking their business across the road to Macari or whatever.
They're, because of that, they're having repeat business with the customers.
They want lifetime customers is what they're about.
And the only way to do that is with customer service like that.
Yeah.
And I'm going to give up two real life examples of crazy Amazon returns.
Deb bought vitamins probably like two or three months ago,
and you can't return like groceries or vitamins or things like that.
Well, she went to Amazon chat.
One minute, money's back.
Category, you can't get returns in.
You're not supposed to be able to return things.
One minute and that money's back.
Right.
So she had to keep it, but they're like, yo, you can take your money back, though.
Yeah.
That's it.
Boom.
Done.
Then you have to send it back.
Another one.
This is even a bigger one.
I talked about a YouTube video a few months ago.
My grandma got a hot tub off Amazon.
What's it decides?
I don't want the hot tub no more.
Right.
It was like, I think it was like four or five hundred dollar hot tub.
I'm going to return it.
It was like one of those inflatable ones.
Right.
So it's not like a huge wooden thing you got to put together.
OK.
It goes on Amazon, hits request refund, says refund approved.
Keep the product.
Keep the five hundred dollar hot tub.
I talked to her on the phone.
She's like, Mike, I'm sitting out here in my free hot tub today.
I still got my five hundred dollars.
That is Amazon.
That is why they are the biggest platform in the universe and never will be touched
by anybody else.
Right.
Thank you, ma'am.
You know what's going to happen?
She's going to tell all her friends, I got a free hot tub.
Amazon and you can't.
Well, they did.
They literally bought that free that advertising for them.
You should go on Amazon and see what you can do, too.
They're going to talk it up because they had a great experience as a customer.
And you know what?
Amazon is right on that.
Yeah, there's never a headache.
There's never a headache with the return on Amazon.
You got to go take it to the store.
Yippee-ki-yay.
They scan a little QR code.
Your money's back in your account instantly.
It's that simple.
It blows my mind that other platforms don't get on board and don't go down the same path.
Everybody, they try to compete with Amazon, but they do it in all the wrong ways.
People are like, well, you got these platforms like Temu and whatever.
Well, Temu doesn't have two day delivery.
You got to wait two weeks to get your stuff.
Yeah, it's cheaper, but people don't care about the price.
Look at Amazon.
The reason our businesses exist is because we can charge more for the junk on Amazon
than we do on eBay.
If we had to move all of our Amazon inventory to eBay, our ships would be sinking at a speed
we wouldn't be able to throw the water in buckets over the side of the boat.
We would sink within months.
But Amazon people, the convenience, the idea, everybody that shops on Amazon knows
I can return this product no matter what if I don't like it.
It happens all the time because that's like, should we get this?
I'm like, yeah, worse comes to worse.
We just return it.
And that's what every Amazon customer has in their mind.
There's a 100% money back guarantee.
Here's some funny things that I thought about.
I don't think I ever spoke about.
So as sellers, sometimes we have to return our items, right?
Well, sometimes Amazon gives me not my item back, but a better item that I as a seller
greatly appreciate.
Thanks for the $100 book, Amazon.
Doesn't happen maybe one out of a thousand.
Doesn't happen all the time.
Or hey, here's a radio.
I sent in a book and I got a radio back score.
It was a Nora Roberts book that I was trying to return.
Excellent.
Or what I love is the people that are checking in our stuff, they do a double scan
and I'm going to sell the book twice now.
Amazon loses out in all these aspects, but we as a seller feel like we've gained something.
That's the power.
Despite all the forum hating how Amazon's bad, whatever.
There are so many good things with Amazon.
We can charge more for our junk, literal junk than anywhere else.
Sometimes they let us double sell things.
Sometimes they send us the wrong item back that is more valuable.
It can go the other way.
It could be less valuable too, right?
Then you would call in, right?
You would call in on the lesser valued item.
But for the better item, you ain't saying a damn word.
But there are so many amazing things that Amazon does both for sellers and customers.
But I think for customers, it doesn't space because that's its focus on the customer experience.
Yeah, Amazon is an amazing place.
I'm going to wrap it up here with my final thoughts and my final experiences with Amazon.
And one of the main reasons I love it, doing selling on Amazon now, I don't even know how many years.
I should like go back and look.
It's definitely over five years.
In my day.
Honestly, the customer Amazon takes care of them.
And the big benefit to that is I have never had to answer a single customer question
with the tens and tens of thousands of items I've sold on Amazon.
I have never had to answer a single customer question.
They pop up from time to time and there's a little button in the bottom that says no response needed.
Even if I know the answer, Johnny, well, I'll respond to somebody when they're like, hey,
are you the used book guy?
Do you want me to subscribe to your channel?
Then I'm like, yeah, go subscribe to the channel.
But other than that, like they could be like, what's one plus one?
No response needed.
It's a magical thing in the world of a platform that only cares about the customer and understands,
OK, these are our sellers.
They use our services to sell.
We charge them fees.
So we take responsibility for any mishaps that might happen along the way.
And for returns on Amazon, I'm a little bit under 4% over the past year.
So 4% of everything I box off in theory gets returned.
So if I send in a box of 100 items, four items are going to get returned.
But the benefit of Amazon is it goes back and it gets sold again.
That's all this comes down to.
The customer is what matters.
And until somebody, until some other platform comes along and prioritizes
customers more than Amazon, they are always going to be on top.
They don't care about the sellers.
Neither does eBay.
None of these platforms do.
And they're rightfully so because if they had all the sellers and no buyers, they make no money.
They got all the customers and a few sellers, then they make a whole bunch of money.
So that's going to do it for this week's call.
We'll talk to you all in next week's episode.