This community is set up for online sellers to pour their woes over the frustration of dealing with difficult, obstinate, demanding, ridiculous buyers. Feel free to post your stories on dead buyers, funny buyers and the 'potential buyers' who never realized their potential and the endless stream of dumb questions that you get asked everyday.
You must join to post and all posts will be moderated to protect the identity of members. We suggest that all shop names, real names to be removed or substitute to protect your identity and...well...your business.
However, we do intend to start a real blacklist of really nasty buyers......such as those who scam, cheat or are just plain annoying. So feel free to send us your stories and your own blacklist.
And we do suggest you set up an anoymous LJ account for this purpose......it wouldn't be wise to post from ur xxx.lj shop account bashing ur buyers right? Well unless of cos if you're open about it. We don't mind either.
To be fair, I should think serious buyers also encounter fraud when making an online purchase, do feel free to join us if you wish.
I really believe that people who ask a lot of questions and ask for additional photos of any of my items I sell online do NOT buy. I think its human nature first of all to want to shop but don't want to buy. So when someone on ebay or elsewhere online ask a question or additional photos, they are essentially just "window shopping". While it isn't wrong and in fact I do it too. But I must say I do it at a lot less frequency than I believe "chronic online window shoppers" do.
The mentality of an online window shopper is this: "I'm bored, I indulge in pseudo retail therapy, I'm not looking for anything in particular, but this catches my eye, let's see what I can hate about it so I don't end up buying it" However, asking questions for an online window shopper is a lot easier than if they did it in person. Bcos it costs them nothing and its mostly anonymous, seriously who would know who the hell is xxx123 and how this xxx123 looks like? And plus since there is no face to face interaction, you never feel embarrassed for not buying when the service staff is really nice.
BUT, asking a question for an online seller is doubly hard. Bcos chances are they will ask you for exact measurements, for eg, once I listed a dress with neck to hem measurements, naturally bcos its a DRESS, I measured the entire length, neck to hem. I provided bust and waist measurements as well. Little did I know, someone would require me to provide them with waist to hem measurements. Which I thot was kind of an idiotic question bcos the photo clearly shows the dress to be divided 2:3 at the waist. You can just divide the entire length without having to make me measure it?? And since from experience, I know 99.9% she will not buy anyway, I did not bother, I just I answered her with the full length measurements bcos the effort to take out the dress from its plastic wrapper and getting the measuring tape to measure it would really be wasted efforts. I figured even if she has seriously short or seriously long legs, a waist to hem measurement will make no difference bcos HELLO a dress hangs from your shoulders!!!
And for those who asked for more photos, again, they do NOT buy, I believe they secretly harbor the wish to make lives difficult for you simply bcos they have nothing better to do. To date, NOT one person who asked for additional photos has EVER bought anything from me. Again, confirming my theory that they are just finding faults so they dun feel the urge to buy. And to these people I say, if you don't have the slightess intention to spend money, DON'T LOOK! And I constantly encountered pp who sends an order, never pays (which is often enough), the worse thing is they keep telling you they'll be paying tomorrow (try 4/5x) and of cos this 'tomorrow' never comes. Oh and someone even told me someone died just so she could get out of the purchase. Of cos I later found out that it was a lie. The truth would have been sufficient.
And the worst of the dead buyers are those who persuade you to do a meetup even though you emphasized that you don't and hours (if you're lucky) or mins before the meeting time, they inform you that they change their minds. What's up with that? Do we online sellers look like we have a lot of time on our hands to entertain your little dip into cybershopping and your incessantly indecisive minds??? FYI, most cyber sellers either have full time jobs or are schooling, we are actually VERY busy! And we'll indulge your every request and answer your every question if you're polite, but to be so inconsiderate to inform us just shortly before a meeting time, its unforgivable.
And I must emphasize once again that this type of mentality extends into real life, if you should find someone constantly finding faults with you, however little or however big, believe me, they are NOT buying (think about it metaphorically). Not yesterday, not today, not ever, they find faults with you bcos they need you to fill up their empty lives but they're too afraid to admit it even to themselves. So they constantly find faults with you so in the end they can tell themselves it was you, not them when in fact they really should have just left you the hell alone. Having vented all these, I am very glad to announce that while there are not many people like me who will buy 3 at a time, there are many who never asked a single question and just buy. To them I say - I like your style!
