Block Buyer Feature

[universalcomputers]

Moon :

What you place about cancellations or anything regarding "fees" that has no meaning. It means jack nothing. PayPal will not honor it nor will the credit card company. PayPal is automated, and they arent going to give you a partial refund. Its either all or nothing. Not as described, the buyer gets a full refund once they prove the item was received by the seller. Non receipt same thing all or nothing.

As far as the credit card company's are concerned, you'll loose. This site is NOT setup in a way so that Ecrater protects itself against any legal agreements. Unless you have a physical signature of the buyer on a document with the terms and conditions clearly spelled out, the seller will loose. The seller has to have a checkout system where they buyer places a checkmark that says "I agree I accept" with the policies stated underneath it. The buyer cannot continue with the checkout unless that check mark is placed next to the terms.

Even if thats the case, in which the buyer has that checkmark next to terms, the chargeback is decided by the buyer's credit card company, not Stripe. Stripe will only fax over your response to the buyer's credit card company. The buyer's credit card company works for their customer not you. The buyer's credit card company or buyer can dispute the transaction over and over again until it goes to Arbritation which costs the seller, not the buyer a non refundable amount of $500. for it to go to Visa, Mastercard. The buyer's credit card company knows this and will make up whatever scumbag tactics they can do, for them to go to their customer and say hey we won the dispute for you.

Credit card processing companies, Visa & Mastercard, are also scumbags. They impose non refundable chargeback fees to sellers. They hit the seller with qualified and non qualified fees ontop of the regular fees. Will advertise to the buyer and encourge the buyer to file disputes against merchants, by saying, "Oh your 100% protected, we're here to help you". Then for the seller they set the rules in direct opposition. You cant have more than 1 dispute for every 100 transactions or else your considered high risk, not to mention the paperwork you have to go through to get your money back for a dispute, and the non refundable chargeback fees.
Buyers will dispute anything including a $1 transaction.

Thats why PayPal is the way to go, they offer a layer of protection so that a PayPal dispute doesnt turn into a credit card chargeback and there's no fees for it. A dispute with a credit card company is an immediate chargeback resulting in fees. When Paypal makes changes its based on the rules set by Visa & mastercard. Paypal made a change from 60 to 180 days for a buyer to dispute an item, not because they decieded to do it, but because thats what Visa & Mastercard always had it at. If a transaction went past 60 days, the buyer would call their credit card company and dispute it directly. Since PayPal legally charged the card they are legally liable for the charge.

Hate to say it, but Ecrater isnt an online store, its a marketplace, an Ebay type service. The rules and procedures are different. You dont have 100% control over your own store. It can be pulled from this place at any time, at any palce. A seller is operating by someone elses rules. They have to worry about a 3rd party pulling their store instantly without notice - sometimes becaue of a buyer saying something that isnt true or what have you. A seller can get negative feedback and for a time period has to deal with the possible loss of business, or a feedback threat from a buyer. You have limited control over what you can do and cannot do.

With your online store hosted by a provider, you the seller get to dictate your own policies, make up your own procedures, can refuse business from anyone that interfers with your daily operations and other factors that allow you to run your business on your time schedule and by your own rules.

Ecrater is a nice 'secondary" marketplace for additional revenues. To have that extra source of income from your primary store. Case in point, it became fustrating for us when we first started, had all this time invested and no sales and now about 60 days later its starting to pick up. But another case, is the international shipping problem, were we basically stopped adding products for the fact, that if we wanted to start to ship international, we have to physically edit every single item to place a country's shipping rate. Then if we needed do a price change to our inventory, it cannot be done on an CSV file basis. Once again very time consuming. Ecrater makes it very clear that you cannot bulk edit once your products are up and running.

Its a nice system, but there's just too much time consuming maintenance a seller has to do to keep their products current and if there's a plan for a seller to expand it seems like you have to start from scratch or at least have everything planned out first and we mean everything and then start. Its not like you have 1000 products up and say no I want to ship to England, edit all 1000 products individually, and as your doing it, you have to place the UK into the shipping matrix and then for whatever products you havent updated yet, Ecrater is telling everyone in the UK you have free shipping to their country until you update that product with the appropriate rates. UK buyers will buy the item thinking its free shipping, then you'd have to refund the money (explanation for not for the refund) it may result in negative feedback from the buyer.

--sorry for the long post--

[MoonwishesStore]

[dccollectibles]

I agree with keeping the arrival date somewhat open. Paypal shipping labels have taken to printing an arrival date (which could easily be turned against you and which I promptly erase), and that's a bad situation just waiting to happen.

[MoonwishesStore]

I never give a delivery date especially since on ecrater there isn't one nor does endicia tell you one. That makes the buyer think there is a problem if it doesn't show by whatever the date is.

[cosmicray]

[dccollectibles]

Try to print directly from the payment (option is there) and the resulting label will show the delivery date if priority is chosen. I just erase it. Thank you photo editor.

[universalcomputers]

Would be nice to have a blacklist button, but the problem is people are a 1 hit wonder. They will do the damage and then you'll never see them again. The problem with a feedback based system is that any buyer can leave negative feedback for whatever reason they want. And you know once the buyer does the damage, its 90% of the time as revenge and you'll never see them again. Just opens the doors back in the days of eBay were you had back extortion. People are scarry when they think they can makes threats, if its not feedback and then its chargeback extortion and it goes on and on.

[SammysSupplies]

That doesn't happen here. If the fb has nothing to do with with you, like shipping times when you got it in the mail the next day, or something like that, eCrater will remove it if you ask. Just make sure your items are listed accurately and that you have followed eCraters rules and you should be fine. There will never be a way to "blacklist" a customer becasue that do not have sign up to buy here.

[cosmicray]

[universalcomputers]

Thats cool about the removal of feedback here. Like we said there isnt a way of stopping a buyer from something from you. Its doubtful that if a problem buyer from the past would ever come back, its been known to happen say in the future.

The only way is to have some sort of Invoicing system like Quickbooks. If there's a buyer you dont like or had a problem with them. You can place a note or message like, "Blacklisted" or "Refuse Orders" underneath the name and address. So when you go to process an order, the second you type in the person's name, the message will come up.

Another way, is to have a spreadsheet of banned people. Alphabetize the name, address, date of purchase, and the reason you dont want to do business with them. Then check every order vs that list.

Otherwise, you cant. The only option there is, is a refund. But it rarely happens, and it does happen its usually in the future. But when it does happen, your like, "buyer you have some gawl'.

I can the problem with Stripe if you run into that problem and the word is chargeback! The problem with stripe, is as stated before, its a merchant account. You'll get charged for processing the order and then get charged again for refunding it. The keyword is problem buyer and chargeback with stripe. If stripe is automated like an authorize.net, then again refund is the only way around it.

If you had your own site, you can do an IP block in the htaccess file, but here, your store is a subdomain of this site, so you dont have access to eCrater's htaccess file. So the ony way is to keep some sort of database of banned buyers and just refund that purchase in the event that it remotely happens.

[MoonwishesStore]

I've never had a reason to block a buyer since I've been here. If you want o, you can jump through a lot of hoops to get your own block buyer list going, but the only way it would work is if you canceled orders and payments. I would just as soon take the payment and if they want to give me grief via feedback about it later, I'll send the ecrater team a quick note and let them handle it (by removing it it).

[universalcomputers]

Well by law, the mail order shipping times apply. If you dont state a time frame, mail order laws are 4-6 weeks. Never give shipment time frames that say on this day your going to get it, or if someone asks you via email dont say it. Nor should you say, "you should be getting it".

We usually put a disclaimer that says once the package is out of our hands, its the couriers responsiblity.

The USPS has jacked up prices, and there has been some shipments were the delivery person doesnt bother to scan the package as delivered, it says, "status not updated" which means the product was delivered by the person didnt bother to scan it as delivered.

Which means someone can say non receipt and you will lose the transaction because there's no proof of delivery.

[cosmicray]

[MoonwishesStore]

I state in my TOS that I ship within 24 hours or less and I use DC on all packages. I certainly don't guarantee a delivery time and an well aware that mail order means it has to be delivered within 6 weeks. Unless there is a huge foul up with the PO most items shipped arrive well before the 4-6 weeks. I don't recall seeing expected delivery dates on most things that I order on line.

I think what a customer really wants is to know when it ships and that it got shipped and the ambitious ones will check the DC at the PO. The unambitious will email asking where something is at after three days and so I then check the status at the PO website and let them know.

Most selling and payment venues have time frames that you have to ship by. Most of them give more time than some of us that ship within 24 hours even need, so I for one and I'm sure many others aren't worried about fitting into the mail order time frame.

[universalcomputers]

The feedback feature on this site is nothing but a bunch of BS. Ecrater doesnt remove feedback, they just make it just as bad. I had some idiot buyer buy something 2 days before she moved. No communication nothing, hit us with negative feedback. Because of some buyer's moronic thinking of buying something and then expecting it to be there litterally overnight, is what sellers are subject to.

Instead of removing the feedback they changed it from negative to neutral. Nice first feedback and its all because of some idiot buyer, that cant read policies, doesnt know how to use common sense to buy something then expect it to be there litterally before we get paid for it.

Always hated feedback systems and this is the perfect reason why. We're just going to abonded our store and say F it! Rather pay for a store and not put up with the BS from idiot people!