Redheaded Jill

On my self-help journey through the years I have listened to a lot of audiobooks. One of the books that I keep thinking I need to re-listen to is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

In this book he talks about how to approach people who are upset and angry when they rail at you and make threats. In my experience with ebay and etsy I have had customers tell me, “I’m going to leave you a horrible review for xyz.” And sometimes they do. I have handled this in several ways.

If the error is with the client or post office I weight my options. If it’s a $10 fiasco then I probably issue a refund and go about my day. If it’s a $50 fiasco I will try to find recompense through usps insurance claims or reason with the customer.

In order of least to most effective…

1. Once a woman left me an angry message and said she was going to ruin my store. I chewed her out right back and said how unfortunate her life must be for her to want to destroy a small business because of a salad plate. She ended up not leaving me a bad review, but she did say a few more hurtful things. She told me to be more professional and I told her to watch her attitude. It wasn’t well done of me, but this was in my early days of online selling and my emotions ran high.
2. One day recently someone was mad because they ordered what they thought were a set of plates. They accused me of being sneaky because my description title didn’t say, “Sold Separately”. It didn’t say this because I ran out of room, but at the very top of the description it said, “Each plate sold separately.” I think I issued a refund this time, but I also blocked them from my store. This is my favorite method for obnoxious people because I hate confrontation, even via email.
3. Last night I received an angry message. Someone was going to leave me a bad review because they haven’t received their mail yet, and I was supposed to get it to them a week ago. They were going to file a claim against me with ebay. Now, I was a little nervous because there have been times that I was very late to getting things in the mail. HOWEVER, this time I had shipped the item 2 days before I was to be considered “late”. I checked the tracking number and the package was sent from my town to Chicago over a week ago. It is currently in transit, but the post office is slow to deliver it. I don’t know why, but it’s been a problem since the holidays. Even if I go to a neighboring town, the package still has to travel a similar route and things are slow moving. In this instance I used the Dale Carnegie recommended method. I validated the customer, “I can understand your frustration. I too have been disappointed in the delivery times of the USPS lately.” I did NOT apologize, because it was out of my hands. I told them, “If you look at the tracking data it shows that I had this plate in the mail on time, but it looks like it got waylaid in Chicago.” I offered them a resolution that was not at the expense of myself and my business. “All mail is insured up to $50, if you contact the post office and file a claim for late or missing mail you might get a refund.”

I waited for a reply. I decided if they were snarky I was going to block them and that was that. Their message this morning was much less hostile, “Thank you for responding, can I please have the tracking number?”

Now… they could have used the tracking number that is on their ebay account, because they can see all the transaction details the same way I can. However, I don’t know if they’re computer illiterate, or just lonely and looking for a fight so they have some reason to engage with another human being. Either way, a gentle but firm response was more effective than me calling out their poor behavior.

One reason I know the self-help books and therapy are working is because this kind of interaction would have hurt me even a year ago. I would have been sick to my stomach and upset for days. I would have told everyone I could about it to seek validation that I wasn’t in the wrong. But this time… this time I am fine. I handled it. I am telling you, but I didn’t cry or get mad or defensive. My stomach hasn’t been upset. I don’t question my value or the value of my store. I rolled with the punches AND got a blog post out of it.

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