Are you losing potential sales?

A little story about Blocked Buyers.

Once upon a time there was a woman from Paris who loved to shop on Ruby Lane. She had purchased 113 items over the course of 3 years. Then one day she went to buy something in a shop where she purchased items often but she received this message:

Just as a buyer may choose not to do business with a retailer, each Ruby Lane Shop Owner has the option of not doing business with a buyer for a variety of reasons.

Shop Owners may also choose not to do business with a buyer that has been blocked by another Ruby Lane Shop.

This Ruby Lane Shop Owner has blocked you from Asking a Question, Purchasing, or Making an Offer in their shop because:

Date/Time: Reason (there are several reasons to chose from)

She panicked, wrung her hands, tears puddled in her eyes, and she exclaimed, "What does this mean? What have I done? Doesn't she like me anymore?"

Fortunately for her, she had the shop owners email so she sent her a note and told her what happened and asked what she had done. She apologized profusely although she didn't know what she was apologizing for. The shop owner was puzzled and set about to investigate and low and behold she discovered the Block tool on her Shop Owners home page. Her block threshold was set to '3' and she surmised correctly that 3 or more Shop Owners had blocked this 'good' customer which is why she was not getting the gals new purchase orders through her shop.

Come to find out the buyer had been blocked by several shop owners for two reasons: One shop blocked her because the gal had the audacity to return an item and perhaps for good reason. (How dare she?) And, two shop owners blocked her because she had inadvertently clicked 'include all addresses in my contact list' when sending out an email to another shop owner. So the shop owners receiving the email decided she was spamming, never thinking it might have been a booboo and they obviously didn't check to see if they had corresponded with her in the past.

The moral of the story. Think before you block and check your block threshold, you might want to change it to a number more accommodatingly than the default of 3. If you stop and think about it, there are over 2400 shop owners on the site and not all are patient and some will block for any reason, including the buyer returned an item (we do allow returns) or the buyer took a little too long to pay (but they did). Can you imagine returning an item to Macy's and they told you you were no longer welcome to shop there?

Carol

Tags: Blocked Buyers, Carol Augustine, Ruby Lane, Shop, Tools

3 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gardenartus Antiques on March 7, 2012 at 2:58pm

We don't have a threshold and decided long ago that it should be how that customer "acts" in our shop whether they are blocked from shopping with us. 99.9% of the time they are blocked because they do not pay for their purchase after repeated attempts of trying to contact them without any response back.

RL needs to change their suggestion that the threshold be at 3. New shop owners or even seasoned ones who might not have looked at it before go in and see it says that RL recommends that shop owners set their threshold at 3 are probably doing just that.

BTW Howdy! Good to see you

Permalink Reply by Ruby Lane on March 7, 2012 at 3:22pm

:0 Good to see you, too. It has been a little quiet around here.

I agree it might be better if we did not actually 'suggest a value' for the reasons you stated and have left my suggestion in the RL internal suggestion box. I know the default used to be set to 10 so there must have been a good reason for the change from RL's point of view, probably something to do with 'real spam' but as a seller it doesn't work for me (spam or no spam). I, like you, would rather make the decision myself whether to block someone than to allow other shop owners to make it for me. Most spam is easy to recognize IMO and I can block them straight away.

The above scenario happened recently and I decided perhaps there were many shop owners who were not aware of the Block Buyer tool and/or didn't realize they could change the threshold.

Carol

Permalink Reply by Graceful Antiques on March 7, 2012 at 3:41pm

Good grief. First time I ever even heard of this tool. I have only blocked one person ever.

Same name/same name person. We all know who that was by now I am sure.

Permalink Reply by Out Of The Attic 2u on March 7, 2012 at 5:09pm

Thanks for the heads-up :)

Permalink Reply by Vintage Clothing Shop on March 7, 2012 at 5:22pm

Graceful, Please PM the buyer so that I know who to look out for and why? Were you scammed?

Permalink Reply by Pearl's Parlor on March 7, 2012 at 5:54pm

Graceful - could you private message me also the name of the buyer you are referring to? Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Out Of The Attic 2u on March 7, 2012 at 5:57pm

No, I don't know who that is???

Graceful Shops said:

Good grief. First time I ever even heard of this tool. I have only blocked one person ever.

Same name/same name person. We all know who that was by now I am sure.

Permalink Reply by CheriShops - Admin on March 7, 2012 at 7:36pm

I did not even know there was a default threshold so thanks for the alert. I would think perhaps it may be better to have the default set to "Do Not Block" and let shopowners decide for themselves. If you had not posted this Carol, I would have been totally unaware of it!

Permalink Reply by The Vintage Jewelry Boutique on March 7, 2012 at 8:04pm

Great article and info Carol !!!! :) I hope everyone changes the blocked buyer threshold of their shop because some shop owners have no patience or tolerance and hit that Block Button quickly. This could have resulted in Ruby Lane and a few shops losing a very good client.

Permalink Reply by Cheryl F Plue on March 7, 2012 at 8:57pm

thanks for the info..I didn't realize my threshold was only 3, I just changed it up to no blocking...I just recently had a repeat customer contact me asking me why she was blocked from my shop ...I hadn't blocked her, she was a good customer...I didn't realize my threshold was so low...I feel bad now.....

Permalink Reply by Graceful Antiques on March 7, 2012 at 10:53pm

There was a whole thread on the private forum about this person but I cannot find it.

If I cannot I will contact by email to let you know. Sandy

Permalink Reply by Ornaments on March 9, 2012 at 7:57am