Who does not like weekends, bank holidays and long Christmas break? However, the first day after break is manic. Apart from “millions” of orders to sort out you have got “zillions” customer queries. This normally quite a big chunk of the day! The annoying bit most of them doesn’t buy even after getting the responses. If you still don’t realise what I am talking about! Here it goes…

eBay has given facility that sellers can allow or disallow buyers to contact you before buying the product. Your will find this settings in – Your Account – Site preferences -Manage communications with buyers. Most of you must have not even realised this existed. If you have selected “Yes” to “Allow buyers to contact from active listings”, eBayers can contact you before buying the product. The idea is good that if there is any doubt about the product they can contact you and ask for more information and they might buy. This puts quite a lot of pressure on your customer support team with blast of queries about the product especially after breaks not letting them concentrate other parts of the business.

Now if you think, there should not be any questions regarding the product anyway. If there is, then you have not listed product appropriately. You should include all relevant product information in the product listing. There is no space limit and you can give as much information as necessary. The products listed in eBay, most of the time is already in the market and already seen by the buyers so, there is already awareness regarding the product. Your customers come to visit eBay only to find bargains. This is why “Allow buyers to contact from active listings” should be turned “OFF”.

If you are worried that your sales would drop down, do a week’s experiment and see the result. I bet you will be surprised!