Find the right customer base and you're winning

[Kiroshi]

I'm interested to know the main sort of consumer groups you all sell to and how you find it affects things like:

Positive feedback
Contacting you before leaving bad feedback
Scammers
understanding people

I find it fascinating how I have found these can vary so differently based on items sold.

My original (pre ban) account I was selling ipone accessories (FU app-le!). The cases I sold were like £2 yet I would still have the rudest people acting like they had spent £20 on a phone case!

Now my whole market is kids stuff, meaning it is all new parents pretty much. Couldnt be nicer, leave loads of good feedback, are kind when stuff goes wrong. The difference is like day and night!

[copley1]

Cheap product normally equals cheap customer.

If i was to cast stereotypes, less money normally equals demographic of poorer area, less education, more crime, more authoritarian/dictatorship parenting...

You see where i'm going here.

This is by no means a dig at the poor, hell i'm not that wealthy myself, simply casting a degrees worth of finding and my life experience of spending the better part of 18 years in a dog **** poor area.

[jeffweico]

I sell books as my main product and have very few customer issues. My customer base is people who read, libraries and on a couple of occasions I even sold some older books to movie studios who wanted to use them as props (a 1974 NY Times crossword puzzle book that one of the actors was reading when a scene opened). To be clear, I deal in used rare and out of print books, not the penny specials. So, most of my customers are just happy to have found what they are looking for. Very few scammers or complainers.

Now, on my other accounts that sell new bulk items and such, it is a different story...

[rsot]

Originally Posted by jeffweico

I sell books as my main product and have very few customer issues. My customer base is people who read, libraries and on a couple of occasions I even sold some older books to movie studios who wanted to use them as props (a 1974 NY Times crossword puzzle book that one of the actors was reading when a scene opened). To be clear, I deal in used rare and out of print books, not the penny specials. So, most of my customers are just happy to have found what they are looking for. Very few scammers or complainers.

Now, on my other accounts that sell new bulk items and such, it is a different story...

That older book find of yours jeffweico...golden

[Geegee83]

I sell stickers, items are low value which stops most scammers, and they are mostly for children to accessorise, or novelty/funny stickers.. I seem to have only the random few weirdo's that are strange, but mostly very happy customers!

I find if you ship things out lightening fast then 99% of people seem happy, if I'm having a bad day or don't work overtime when I should then I noticed you get more pissy emails as despite the products maybe being okay, they are already annoyed before they get it as you didn't immediately deal with their order. I can be the same when I buy stuff though, it's just the modern "want it now" attitude!

I also sell a lot of unique stuff that people can't get elsewhere, so generally people want to sort out any problems rather than just throwing their toys out of the pram and demanding a refund. Mind you, I get those too sometimes, usually scammers though.

[rsot]

Kiroshi, you are welcome to join my main consumer group as a buyer as well

[hulkman]

I have to agree that most people seem very happy with just the shipping time. I do most of my business on Amazon where people barely leave feedback and I have noticed that when they do leave feedback it almost always something about shipping time and how satisfied they are that they got it so soon.

Now as far as customer base (I don't mean to sound racist in any way) I am seeing that almost 80% of customers who have some sort of issue always seem to be Asian. I am not sure why, but it's always some sort of message from them about not being satisfied and always wanting a refund.

A year ago I did somewhat of an experiment. I was selling an iPhone case (generic) that was selling really well; I sold more than 500 pieces in about two weeks. Because it was such a cheap item and I was selling it mostly to get feedback, I would send customers 2 cases if they ordered 1. Or I would send them 4 if they ordered 2. Out of about 500 transactions only 1 person sent us a message thanking us for it. About 15 or so people requested to return the case saying that they ordered it by accident or changed their mind and instead of returning both cases they would keep 1 and return 1. Almost all of them were Asian.

Again, not trying to sound racist or anything, but I've noticed that most of my returns or refund request have a common patter as far as type of customer. I am not sure if its a culture thing where they can justify scamming the seller/system and trying to get as much as they can for free.