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I would imagine that most people have experience on eBay - if they’ve ever been on the internet. eBay is seen by many as a great opportunity to make a living from home, as long as you can find the right products at the right price to resell. My wife is a Powerseller on eBay, and it’s anything but easy. It’s work. But she enjoys it, and makes a great sideline income from it.

Those of you who are sellers on eBay, what do you think of the feedback system?

It seems that no matter how careful you are, and no matter how good the customer service you provide is, sooner or later some idiot is going to leave you negative feedback. Personally, I’ve dealt with a few people who probably deserved a negative, but I’m slow to leave a negative because of the permanence of a negative comment. You see, if you leave a seller or a buyer negative feedback, it hurts their feedback rating…..permanently. On eBay, the feedback rating you have is your reputation. With this knowledge, there are some buyers who will use this to try and bully you into doing anything they want. They will hint around that they’ll leave negative feedback if they aren’t 100% satisfied (this usually comes with the feeling that they are gonna be extremely hard to satisfy).

Do buyers really look at that feedback rating seriously?

You better believe they do. On a number of occasions, I’ve decided not to bid on items due to the seller’s feedback rating. On the other hand, if a seller has a couple of negatives out of a huge number of positives, they’re probably very good to do business with. If you actually go to their feedback page and read through it, many times those who left a negative are obviously in the wrong. What prompted this post, was a negative my wife received back four or five months ago. At the time, she had built her feedback rating up over 1200 transactions, with 100% positive feedback. After receiving the item, a buyer decided they didn’t want the product after all. They were offered a refund. Because she wouldn’t refund their money + the shipping charges paid sending the product to them, they left a negative.

Since that time, she’s come in contact with, what’s the best way to say it, other buyers who were unreasonable. To date, she still only has the one negative in her career on eBay, despite this. I was thinking about a few traits that seem to be common among eBay buyers who are quick to leave negative feedback and/or be unreasonable:

• They usually have a fairly new eBay id. This makes you wonder if they are really new, or they had to start over due to their past on eBay. If they are new, they really should learn how the system works before bidding.
• If you look at their “feedback left for others“, they leave negative feedback on a regular basis. I know we’ve dealt with a few people we thought were going to be a problem. When we looked at what type of feedback they left others, that didn’t help our feelings in most cases.
• They are usually slow to pay when the auction ends. It’s a bad sign when you’re paid through Paypal a week after the end of the auction. That’s usually the buyers who start sending emails wanting to know when the package was shipped and how quick they can expect it.
• They are usually the ones who will not answer emails at the end of the auction. Then all of a sudden they are unreasonable.

So my little piece of advice is this - if you can’t be reasonable, you’re better off not using eBay. The eBay community will be better off without you as well. If a buyer or a seller deserves negative feedback, by all means leave it for them. Let others know that this person wasn’t that great to deal with. However, understand that you are doing PERMANENT damage to their reputation. Once you leave it, it can’t be undone……..so think twice before you do it.

Tags: Best Practices, Business, Web, eBay by Anthony ∗ 5 Comments »

I’ve read in several different places recently, how many prospective employers may partially base their decision on hiring you - based on your blog. The blog is the new resume? That could be good or bad.

Apparently, some prospective employers go as far as to “google” your name and see what turns up. I’m sure that would be bad news for a lot of folks. On the other hand, it could be a very positive thing. Just think, your blog could be like an ongoing resume, keeping up with your accomplishments in real time. Adam Darowski says:

Blogging is the perfect way for a candidate to give an employer a more detailed sales pitch—to show they can “talk the talk” (as opposed to just fill a resume with buzzwords). I can’t think of a reason for any serious tech professional to not have a blog. Not only does it serve as an excellent notebook for storing ideas and links, but it can come in handy in a job hunt where what interviewers really want to just know what, professionally (and somewhat personally), engages you on a day to day basis.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, corporate recruiters have been doing this for quite a while. The article goes on to suggest that recruiters not only focus on industry related content, but they also check the candidates’ blogs about “noncareer-related topics for evidence of writing skills and clues to how rounded they are”.

It makes sense to me……. and it’s only been a matter of time in our high-tech society. If you needed a good reason to take your blog more serious, this could be it. If you were in the market for a job, could your web presence help you in the process, or would it come back and bite you?

Tags: Best Practices, Blogging, Business, Career by Anthony ∗ 15 Comments »

I was reading this article in the April issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, called Do You Talk To Much?, and it got me thinking about all the annoying habits people can have, that hold them back in life without them realizing it. Everyone knows someone like this. Maybe they’re a good person, but you hate to see them coming because they will tell you everything you don’t want to know about anything, and it’s extremely difficult to break away from them in conversation. The article suggests that we think of long-winded people as being “boring and self-absorbed”. It seems as though they enjoy the sound of their own voice so much, that they have a total disregard to whatever non-verbal clues your sending them. I’ve seen this in job interviews as well. An applicant just talks their way right out of a job, because they can’t answer a question. They’re trying to come across as being friendly, but they go way off topic telling some story rather than directly answering a question.

Another characteristic that came to mind, is people who are “close talkers”. I’m sure most of us have seen the episode of Seinfeld that pokes fun at the issue. It really is annoying to talk to some one who feels the need to get right in your face. Personally, I don’t want to smell your lunch when we’re talking……know what I mean?

The obvious question has to come up about ourselves. Whether we realize it or not, we may have bad communication habits of our own, that keep us from getting where we want to go in life. Here are a couple of questions to keep in mind:

1. When you talk, do people start fidgeting, and looking away?
2. When in a conversation, do you talk over 30 seconds without giving the other person a chance to speak?
3. Do you enjoy hearing yourself talk?

The sad thing is, that most people are not going to tell you that you talk too much. They will just avoid you.

Tags: Best Practices, Business, Career by Anthony ∗ 7 Comments »

Every decision in life that we make, we make based on our veiw of the options. There are lenses, if you will, that we can see the choices through. These lenses are mostly subject to our situation and our background. They form our perception of the world. Our perception of the world is either optimistic or pessimistic.

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Tags: Best Practices, Career, Goals by Anthony ∗ 4 Comments »

At some point, we’ve all had to deal with a real “nut-job”. That is unless, of course, we’re the “nut-job”. Hopefully that’s not the case. People who seem to be impossible to deal with can frustrate you in a way that death seems like the easiest and most sensible solution. Of course, that’s not the case………but it’s the way our mind can over-exaggerate a situation if we’re frustrated enough. The best thing to do is to learn how to deal with these people before they get you on your wits end.

The Facts….

1. You have to accept that you can’t deal with this kind of person the same as everyone else. It’s just impossible! That’s what led you to realize how impossible they were in the first place. They may be crazy, or maybe your personality doesn’t mix with theirs, but either way, you have to be very direct when you have to communicate with them. Sometimes you have to treat them like children, being extremely gentle with your words and ever aware of them being how they are.
2. You have to figure out for sure if it’s them, and not you! Most likely it is, or you would have these problems with almost everyone, not just this hot shot. The fact is though, that this can be confusing, because impossible people like to blame everything on someone else. So, you may be the target of that blame. Just always replay the situation in your mind and make sure you aren’t the problem. Be ready to admit it if you are.
3. It’s much easier said than done, but stay cool and don’t let anger get you bent out of shape. People who act like children should be treated as such. If they become angry and start yelling, it’s best not to engage them. Let them have their say, but assume they are just venting. Don’t take what they say personally, just remember if the conversation needs to continue, let it wait until they can act like an adult. At some point, you may need to even tell them that.

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.
Proverbs 15:1

Tags: Best Practices, Business, Career, How To by Anthony ∗ 7 Comments »

While making my way through the local McDonald’s drive-thru the other day, something in the background caught my attention. This drive-thru is one of those where the first window is where the financial transaction occurs, and the second window is where the customer is rewarded with the food they’ve paid for. In the first window, I noticed two signs on the wall which served to remind employees of the goals. The first sign read:

Obviously, no big deal. It’s good that they have goals to keep things moving. The drive-thru is not a place where the customer wants to sit and wait. I’ve been under the impression that the whole purpose was the speed. The sign that hung just below the first read:

Again, not a big deal to me at all. The faster we can exchange the money, the quicker this whole deal can go down. Let me pay you, you give me the food, and we’re done. At this point, the customer has to drive up to the next window to retrieve the food. I was interested to see what the “Order Fulfillment Goal” would be. Unfortunately, there was no sign hanging on the wall in the second window. At least it wasn’t visible to the customers as the signs in the first window were.

I’m not on an Anti-McDonald’s crusade. My impression was that them taking my money was much more important than delivering hot fresh food in a quick and orderly way. Unfortunately, the first two objectives, order-taking and money-exchanging, were the fastest parts. When I got to the second window, I waited for 3 or 4 minutes until I was asked to pull forward……where my order would be brought out to me as soon as it was ready. I guess they didn’t want me to hold up the line……and no, my order was no complicated order with “special requests”. A simple combo meal as it comes “stock”.

So, is McDonald’s missing the point?

Tags: Best Practices, Business, Goals by Anthony ∗ No Comments »