How much money did I end up losing with this? The reason for the refund will make your eyes roll. Let's start from the beginning:
Listed these dover thrift books - 4 women's writers, all of them are a collection of short stories. Beautiful books, I wanted to keep them for myself anyways. I had them listed for $24. I knew I could sell them between $6-$8 and I knew that it was an awesome collection to find all together.
These books I got at the Hospice for a quarter each. So my COG was $1.
The buyer messaged me and talked me down on my price, I agreed because I was hurting financially. Here's her messages asking if I accepted offers, which I do, I have it in my bio.
And then, to my dismay, 8 days later she requests a refund. I try to handle it with grace, of course I want to save the sale.
My reply:
I am scared that I was that vulnerable, and I don't recommend other sellers be that open because then her denial felt rather insensitive to my very real situation.
so the reason why she didn't want my 4 books was because she thought they would be long enough - they were SHORT STORIES. Dover Thrift books usually are tiny.
I did ask her if she would consider "repoping" which is a Depop term.
I even explained how it would benefit her, since I gave her a great deal - 2 for the price of 1. I also took a deep dive on her buying history, she had a long history.
She tells me about her last purchase, I did want to be firm but still respect her decision. After all at the end of the day, these are just books. I also don't want to scare her away from purchasing in the future because I did everything right. If anything agreeing with her just shows what an amazing shop Hyla Brook Books is.
Paypal does not refund you the fee but Depop can. I sent a request to get my money back from the Depop fee. She paid through Paypal, so I refunded her through Paypal the total amount of $19.07.
This means I'm still at a loss of $1.16.
Plus the floral polymailer + 2 stickers + bookmark. the package is in transit, so hopefully the books come in great condition like they were sent.
I shared my woe to my reseller instagram - belle.resells. It's my most used instagram ATM.
Belletrist Bookshop, Southerngothicantiques, and Memorylanedestash all messaged me and just shared in my grief, but also surprised me telling me I did a good job handling it with grace.
I did a poll on my instagram stories for belle.resells, showing a photo of the dover thrift books, asking if any one would be down to listening to a live reading of one of the short stories? 11 out of 35 voted yes! That's 1/3 of my audience that wants me to have a podcast with them.
I'm leaning towards reading Kate Chopin, since she is one of my favorite writers from when I was in highschool, but I have a feeling that I would prefer Louisa May Alcott.
Comments
Post a Comment