Customer Care

We cannot stress enough the importance of daily good customer care in your store for practical reasons:

• It protects you profits - unhappy customer in eBay gets their money back
• It protects your future sales - poor seller ratings reduce your store exposure
• It protects your store asset - eBay shuts down stores with high rates of cases, INRs or undelivered orders

The rest of this article provides best practices for customer care aspects: Messages, Returns & Refunds, Cancellations - buyer side, Cancellations - source side, and Cases.

Messages

Messages is the main way for you and your buyers to communicate with each other -  set expectations, raise concerns, or solicit seller's ratings.
Thumb rules for handling message:

• Check your store messages daily
• Answer all messages in a timely manner
• Answer politely, even if your buyer isn't polite
• Answer accurately on product-related questions - refer unknown questions to your source seller 
• Maintain effective communication with your buyer to prevent cases at all cost
• Message buyers' pro-actively for any deviation from your policies, to set expectations and reduce disappointments
• In API, you can use our auto-messages feature to send your buyer a "thank you!" letter, "your package is on the way" notification and a feedback request after X days, as well as leave an automatic feedback to your buyer. If you are using our automatic non-API, check out this article instead.
  
  

Returns & Refunds

Assuming your store Returns Policy allows returns like most dropshippers, and when you get a cancellations request, you need check these things in order to make a decision if to allow the return:

• Is your buyer eligible for return according to your policy? buyers can ask you to return a product even if it's against your policy (e.g. too much time passed). 
  
  
• Was the product fulfilled by your Amazon Accounts or Yaballe Amazon Accounts? the return process is different for each case. In case the answer is Yaballe - get familiar with the service terms & conditions, and also with the service return & refund process. 
  
  
• Is the product returnable in Amazon and if so, how to return it? Amazon might not allow you to return a product (e.g: the Amazon account was closed, or the item is food products that isn't ineligible for return), or deny it if the return isn't by process (e.g. private label improperly reported). 
  
  
• Is there a shipping fee for the return in Amazon, if yes, what is the cost? Some returning policy in Amazon don't allow free shipping for return (e.g.: 3rd party sellers return policies), and teh shipping cost might be higher than the expected refund sum for the returned item. 
  

Some best practices for your consideration:

Cancellations by The Buyer 

Your eBay buyer can cancel his orders by doing the following:

• eBay cancellation option, within 60 minutes of order placement 
• Later, by messaging you to ask to cancel the order
  

You should identify eBay cancellations promptly, because the most important aspect of order cancellations initiated by your buyer, is how fast you can handle the cancellation with your supplier by this order of priority:

1. Prevent placing the order in Amazon - 
   
   • If you're using auto-ordering: try to exclude the order in Yaballe > Sold Items page, and prevent it from being placed in Amazon ( possible in PENDING, or PROCESSING status)
      
2. Cancel an order that was already placed but not shipped yet -
   
   • If the order was fulfilled by Yaballe Amazon Accounts: contact Yaballe support with the Support > Fulfillment Service Request > Cancel Order ticket form. Note that this is a best-effort request - Yaballe will contact Amazon seller and ask to cancel the order. If approved, you'll get your refund if/once Amazon refunds it (according to the service terms & conditions). 
     
     
3. Return an order that was already shipped - Amazon return labels are available only after the product was delivered - so advice your buyer that the order is already on its way, and to contact you once he gets it, in order to return it. 
   

Note:  there could be use cases where your eBay buyer asks to cancel their order however you are unable to cancel the supplier order and/or get its refund - make sure you take into account such cost recoveries in you pricing and profit considerations.  

Cancellation Due To Source Supplier Issues

When you realize that you cannot fulfill an order to your buyer (e.g. seller mistake, stock run out, lost on the way, or source price increased making it unprofitable).

• It couldn't be placed in Amazon (e.g. out-of-stock, Amazon page changed, shipping cost, or price higher than eBay price)
  • If your using auto-ordering: order status is ERROR (with verbose message detailing the specific error)
• It's cancelled by the Amazon seller after it was placed (e.g. defect, stocking error, etc.)
  • If your using auto-ordering: order status is CANCELLED  

It's important that you handle such a case with sensitivity on both eBay side and your buyer side, to avoid defects and impact on your  store. There are the best practices:

Cases

Cases arise when a user escalates an issue and opens a dispute, such as Item Not Received (INR), Item Not as Described, or a payment dispute. It is crucial to:

• Respond to cases before their specified due date - or the case will be automatically closed in the buyer's favor, and record a defect on your account.
• As much as possible, solicit users to close cases if you managed to get to an agreement with them.