Step By Step Guide to Leaving Feedback on eBay

 Leaving feedback for the seller after your item arrives is an important end to every eBay transaction. Your leaving feedback lets the community (and the seller) how happy you were to do business with this person.
There are several ways to leave feedback for a seller:

• If you’re on the transaction page, click the Leave Feedback link; the Leave Feedback page appears.
• In the Purchase History area of your My eBay page, click the Leave Feedback link next to the transaction.
• In the Feedback Forum, click the Leave Feedback link to see a list of all your completed auctions from the last 60 days for which you haven’t left feedback.
• On your My eBay page, scroll down and on the left side you will see your purchase history. Click there to find the item that's just arrived. Under Actions to the right of the item, you will see a Leave Feedback link, which will take you to the Feedback page.
• Click the Community-->Announcements link, in the main navigation bar, and then click eBay Feedback Forum. On the next page that appears, click the Leave Feedback link.

To leave feedback for a seller, follow these steps:

1. Enter the required information.
   Note that your item number is usually filled in, but if you’re placing feedback from the user’s feedback page, you need to have the number at hand.
2. Choose whether you want your feedback to be positive, negative, or neutral.
3. Type your feedback comment.
4. Fill in your star ratings by clicking the stars next to the questions (see further on, "Giving Detailed Star Ratings Properly ").
   If you decide that the seller’s description was inaccurate, you will have to explain why by clicking next to the explanations that appear
5. Click the Leave Feedback button

In addition to a feedback comment and rating (positive, negative, or neutral), buyers should leave detailed seller ratings, too. After the buyer types a comment, he or she is prompted to rate the seller with one to five stars on four different factors of the transaction. The table below shows the specific rating factors, and a translation of what the stars mean.

To see the rest of the tips (and my personal take on the eBay Star ratings) please click visit the article on my website.

"I bought WHAT on eBay?" What to Know and Do When You've Been Impersonated

So I'm clearing out my email before I go to sleep. Decide to clean out a mailbox that's pretty much dead - left over from my old marketing agency days. To my surprise, I see an email from eBay requesting that I pay for an item I supposedly purchased on the site.
I had to shake my head, as I knew I hadn't used this email address in years. I examined the email. In the area where eBay would insert the User ID of the buyer, was a series of numbers. Hmmm, strange ID. I try to check out the headers to see if the email came from eBay. This is close to impossible to do on the phone, so I examined the links - and indeed the email did seem authentic.
Within a few hours, an invoice was sent to the same email address, addressed "Dear 2679302013" with my name appearing at the top of the email.

It's after midnight, so I took to my laptop to research further. I perform an eBay bidder search by going to eBay's advanced search:

I find that this user ID made one purchase (the one I was invoiced for), but the purchase was made while I was on my radio show. I clearly couldn't have made this purchase. The User ID also showed eBay's new user icon with 0 feedback. By clicking on a user's feedback number, you can find out when the user first signed up for eBay. Clicking through I find that they signed up for eBay on a Saturday as well. Hmmm. I usually don't sign up for new accounts when I am on the air.

I went to eBay - and clicked the Customer Service link, hoping to send them an email alerting them of the impersonation. I was amazed to find that eBay's customer service takes phone calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was after 1 am at this point, but I figured, why not give it a shot.
The customer service representative (working from eBay's Salt Lake City hub) answered the call and listened to my tale of woe. I had forgtten several things:

• eBay keeps all the data user's input when you sign up for an account
• IP addresses are attached to transactions
• eBay sends out an email upon opening an account

"Charm", the CSR sent an email to the registered email address with a code to confirm that I was indeed the owner of the address. I read her back the code from the email and she said that eBay would remove the email address from the account. What bother's me is that the account is still for Marsha Collier, and is still an active account on the eBay site.
Lesson learned? If you have old email accounts, be sure to check them regularly. If I would have followed my own advice, I might have noticed the initial registration email that came from eBay (sent 2 days after the user registered the bogus account) welcoming me to the site. I sincerely wonder why eBay no longer requires an email address confirmation from those who open an account. If they'd have, the user would not have been able to make a fraudulent purchase - as I'd not confirmed the authenticity of the address.

I recommend in my books to let brands know when they have done something right; when you are pleased with their service. (They must get so sick of social media complaints, that a compliment usually brightens their day, and the reply with a "thank you." So next morning, I used Twitter to thank @eBay (and @AskeBay) for their CSR's excellent service. All I got back was the sound of crickets - no response.

The Psychology of Social Commerce: Mental Rule of Thumb for Shoppers

The topic of the book I've just finished writing is social media commerce. This infographic guides you through the process I've covered ...

The proliferation of social media has led to a new form of e-commerce: social commerce. Psychologists have analyzed the thoughts and behaviors of “social shoppers” to determine what drives them to a purchase.

via thinkingforward.tumblr.com

10 Groundbreaking Stats on Social Commerce: Why eCommerce Will Never Be the Same [Infographic]

It's not your old e-commerce anymore, social commerce is taking over the online shopping arena. The infographic below was developed by the folks at Want Technlogies from data aquired at IRCE 2012. There, successful brands revealed their internal site metrics - sharing their users’ behavior and how they’ve been able to leverage those basic human yearnings (sharing, discovery, fantasy) and turn them into more sales.

via blog.wanttechnologies.com

 

Make Your Online Sales Grow: Build Your Brand on eBay - new For Dummies!

The latest (seventh) edition of 'eBay For Dummies" just came out for 2012. In this video, discuss how to make your listings stand out from the others and building your brand on eBay!

Money-saving Online shopping tips from Marsha Collier: San Francisco News

via abclocal.go.com

Simple steps to save money every time you shop! How to find the best deals on your favorite items.

Top 10 Tips on how to shop smart (and find the best deal, for you!):

1. Use your mobile phone for back-up: Not sure if you are getting a real deal when your shopping in-store? Your mobile phone can an instant resource to price check. Use any one of your favorite shopping apps, type in the product, and see what the item is going for online (or in other stores near you). If it's drastically less than the price tag your holding in your hand - try to bargain with the salesman& or hold off and buy it when you get home!

2. Do your homework: When making a big-ticket purchase, it's important to do some research. Let's put it this way -- that flat screen you're about to be online may be listed at $250, but when you plug it in, it could very well be black and white! "Cost" is more than just how much cash you hand over, but is about your happiness with the product. Make sure to read product reviews online(there are hundreds of sites dedicated to sharing user and expert reviews), do some research, and buy from a retailer who you trust.

3. Take advantage of coupons: Now more than ever cost counts. There are millions of coupons, discounts, and offers available online for just about any item. Search on TheFind.com, print.coupons.com, or Groupon to see what type of applicable store coupons that you can get to purchase your item at an even lower total cost.

4. Make a secure purchase, look for a trusted logo: Does the website you clicked on look a bit shady? No contact phone number, no help line, or even worse - no product image. Find a McAfee, TRUSTe, or a VeriSign badge to make sure that you're not being scammed.

5. Hand over your phone for a deal: Not only can you use your phone for research and back-up, but there are new mobile sites and big retailers that let you use mobile coupons at your favorite store. (example include Target, Mobile Spinach and others). You can flash your phone at checkout to save big bucks!

6. Listen to the experts: There are hundreds, scratch that thousands of expert shoppers blogging about their favorite deals, sales, and products! Do some digging to find a blogger who likes the same things you do (be in eco-friendly clothes or high-fashion pumps) and have them help you find the best place to spend your hard-earned cash!

7. Look at the return policy: You may be saving when you buy during that private 1 hour sale, but does the site let you make returns? Make sure to do a quick read on their policies to make sure that if it doesn't fit or the color doesn't match your style, you can get your money back.

8. Check for tax and shipping deals (odds are, you can get it sent to your home for free!): Retailers are competing for your business, and one way they are doing it is by shaving off costs. Make sure you do some searching to see if you there are any applicable shipping or saving codes for you to get your item to you for free. Heck, who doesn't want to save $10!

9. Can you get it cheaper at WalMart? Maybe Target?: WalMart and Target are known for having the lowest prices online, and in the store. Rather than hunting and pecking around on each site, check out TheFind.com to get a side by side comparison view of how much it's selling at each of the retail giants, and see how it stands up against everyone else.

10. Don't one-stop shop: Although you may typically buy your favorite Haviana flip flops at Macys, do some searching around online to see if they are offering you the lowest price. At TheFind.com, you can easily do a quick search for "Haviana sandals" and view the lowest prices from more than 500,000 stores and online sellers. If you need them now, try TheFind's local search to see where you can buy them in your neighborhood, for the lowest price.

Online Shopping tips on ABC 7

I went up to San Francisco to be on The View From The Bay on ABC7, to talk about online shopping tips. Of course we talked about eBay, but I've also been using TheFind quite a bit. It indexes almost every store on the web!