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What's the safest time to go without answering buyer emails?
 

I, like many of you, have multiple ebay accounts and if I go through them all answering emails and dealing with buyers it takes many hours. Time is spent on things like changing IP, loading mail from free mail website, then loading ebay pages, dealing with buyers, and much more. It would save me so much time if I didn't have to spend it doing that every single day.

I sometimes try for two days in between but I'm worried that the buyer will ask something and if I don't answer fast enough I'll get a neg feedback. I'm also hoping to move out of state when I get the money and that'll guarantee I'll not be answering emails for several days at a time. It'd be really nice to be able to go at least 3 days each time without answering email.

Though very strangely I find that the more I email back and for to a buyer the more the nastier they get. And if the buyer is emailing a lot of stupid/irrating stuff, they'll neg if I communicate too much but be happy if I don't take to them much.

im too lazy to log into dialup and then wait for each ebay account to load so i just dont answer emails lol. only for people who have paid and i have shipped items i actually answer questions, everyone else i just make my listings as detailed as possible. never had a problem with an item selling too low $$ because of not answering questions yet.

That's quite fascinating. I do find people who ask lots of questions just want to find flaws in my products. Other times I've heard of people asking lots of questions and then later I find out they start selling the same items, but that is very rare.

I do find sometimes for instance someone contacts me to ask a question and either I forgot say to mention the size of the product or once auctiva somehow forgot to include the description of 20 of my listings and they all ended up blank.

A lot of my emails come from people who already won the item and their credit card isn't matching and I try to deal with them fast.

ivegotinfo though I am a bit worried of the people who win and go where is my item. I have avoided giving them shipping details and for people in the USA tracking # after shipping because it takes a bunch of time and secondly ecause I often take several days to ship and if I let buyers know for when I ship slow to them they may be mad at me instead of blaming the post office. What do you recommend?

Also what do I do when people who bid, win, and then don't pay until I answer lots of questions first and challenge me to convince them to pay?

I forgot to ask you, so even for those people you do answer, how long do you wait in between answering questions?

bump thread.

Someone please help me with this.

I never answer questions because most of the questions people ask is already in my listing and if they didn't take the time to read the entire listing then I dont want them buying from.

I usually answer the questions when I log into the account to list new items. Usually 1-3 times a day.

Same here-- I'll tell you.. ONE of the Best Investments I made in 2007,
was the Palm Treo 700W
-Even on vacation-- could ck ppal balance BEFORE we took kids into a gift shop--so i kinda knew how much we could spend...
+++++ Get a BRAND NEW IP on BRoadband every time log in...

i never answer any emails while auction is running simply because too much work with the dialup.
if the person who asked me questions wins, then i might answer their questions. but not to the point of where i have to prove to them that they should pay me, only something like "how fast will the shipping take" or "what size is blah" but even then, if after winning the person asks me a question, sometimes if its a retarded question or was mentioned in the listing, i wont answer it. its their fault, why bid on something when you are not sure? i even scold some for doing that. usually low feedback people. they ask a question, then bid on the item without waiting for a reply, so i tell them , what if my answer would be totally not what you were looking for, you would have wated my time and money etc etc. if after winning the item they dont pay me in 7 days, no matter if i answered their questions or not (theres no rule on ebay that says you have to answer questions), i just do non paying bidder, that usually makes them pay, or i get my money back...lost time though. but... what can you do. doesent happen that often though.
Also, i too, noticed that the people that answer the most questions will give you the most trouble. thats why i dont answer questions in hopes those people wont bid on my items.

p.s. i never think of the buyers as these godlike wonderful beings like they do in the retail industry. this is ebay, i have like half the worlds population that i can sell this item to, so you better be a good boy when buying from me, i am not obligated to go out and do extra work (answering questions). i think this also depends on the category and what you are selling, but with my vero items, always people wanting to buy stuff.

LOL.. Wow, so many diverse opinions..
-- I Managed a Kmart the first 5-6 yrs of my marriage, I started as a Cashier , so it was implanted in me.. The Customers are ALWAYS right..
-- Take the used toaster back they said they just bought yesterday, when its actually rusted... :)
_ So, in Ebay, I take everything back.. my customers like me, (i think).. and I do try to bend over backwards for them..

I guess because I never run more than 2 accounts at a time and never more than 5-10 items on each that this has never been an issue for me. I usually answer them as they come in, but only through my messages. I'm there already so why not?

I do agree with CH though on not bothering to answer people who don't read the listing