Encouraging news

[gajuseidi]

We've had plenty of discussions about "order cancellation vs poor review" type situation here on the forum. Experienced sellers have given strong arguments from both sides and it seems to me that there is no objectively right answer.

However, this post is not entirely about that. This post is about a personal experience that I wanted to share with you.

Some time ago in October I've had a displeasure of meeting a manipulative and malicious client. Even before the order was placed, the client was exhibiting suspicious behaviour. First and foremost, they asked for a free sample before the order. This is one of the most common and most obvious red flags you will see on the platform. After talking to them a little bit, a second red flag flies right over my head. They wrote: "Ok great I can pay now if you’re ok doing this". This much hesitation before placing the order is not normal and I should have noticed it right then. They were already manipulating me to doubt my own abilities and were implying that whatever the case, it will be my fault. I replied that I'm certain we can achieve a good result and the order was placed.

After the delivery they immediately accused me of using a free app to do all the work, gave vague feedback with no information on what needs to be changed, and threatened to cancel the order rather than giving an elaborate revision. I explained that I use a paid version of the mentioned app in addition to various advanced enhancement software to achieve the result. I urged them to use the free app they mentioned for their photo and see the difference for themselves.

They went silent for 4 days. I asked for feedback that would be at least somewhat useful, they gave three short replies and I corrected these places in the photo. After the revision, they requested to cancel the order writing "Sorry, I would like to cancel this order as the quality of the unblurred image is just not good enough and does not look realistic at all. Thank you for your efforts but it’s just not what I expected at all and is not good quality at all. If this can’t be cancelled I will have to be forced to leave a bad review but I hope it will not come to that."

Note the repeating emphasis "at all" and a threat to ruin my ratings, as they "will have to be forced to leave a bad review". This is a poorly thought-out attempt to convince me and whoever will review the cancellation that the order was not delivered or was deliver in awful quality. I have chosen to cancel the order and block this client.

Since then this particular cancellation was bugging me as I knew it wasn't right. No client should be able to hold a seller hostage just because they want to. I decided to contact the Customer Support and explained this cancellation in full detail.

To my pleasant surprise, the CS deemed buyers' manipulative and malicious behaviour as fraudulent and have since removed the negative effect on my OCR from this cancellation.

I've found this experience very encouraging and I want to remind sellers that it's worth appealing to the CS even when it seems that nothing can be done about a cancellation. I will leave you with a quotation from the Order Completion Rate and Cancellations FAQ:

 

"All cancellations, including those handled by Customer Support, can affect your OCR. On rare occasions (such as fraudulent purchases, buyers ordering by mistake, or the seller not having enough information to start working on an order) cancelation will be handled as to not affect your OCR. If your order is canceled under such circumstances, reach out to Customer Support to investigate the effect of the cancellation on your account."

 

[vickiespencer]

In my experience CS has always helped me out by reinstating my stats if the buyer was at fault or the fault was beyond my control.

[gajuseidi]

31 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

if the buyer was at fault or the fault was beyond my control.

I was quite surprised when the CS reinstated my OCR status, because it could have easily went either way. The buyer was clearly not satisfied with their order, as they repeated themselves 4 times emphasising on how dissatisfied they were. I'm just glad that the CS assistant took into account buyers' behaviour and saw through their manipulative tactics.