All that fuss over $10...

Yesterday morning my email box had a note from a customer who thought the book she bought was "not as described," so she was asking for a refund.  I thought I had described the negative parts of the item well enough, but in the interest of customer service, I agreed to refund her money--she even asked me to refund the amount it was going to cost her to send it back.  I don't usually do that, but didn't want to spend time discussing it with her, so I also agreed to that.  After sending that information back to her, I received another note--this time she said, "I would be happy with half the purchase price refunded. 10.99/2=$5.50.
Does this sound fair to you?"

Yes, it sounds fair to me!  I immediately refunded the $5.50 and wrote her a quick Thank You/apology note and forgot all about it until later that afternoon.  I was checking my sold lists looking for an item I needed to leave feedback for....and, I discovered she had left a neutral feedback for the transaction!  Needless to say, I was not pleased since I had tried to accomodate her earlier in the day.  The one neutral did not affect my 100% feedback, but still I didn't want it there for everyone to see!  So, I went into eBay where you can request a revision of feedback (feedback forum/request feedback revision), filled out the required information, and where I could leave her a note, I wrote:

I tried hard to fix the problems in our transaction per your wishes.  I was willing to pay your postage to return the book to me, but then you said you would accept a refund of ½ the original price- I immediately did that.  In many people’s eyes, a neutral is just like a negative. Could you please change the neutral to a positive?  Thanks so much!  -Rae 

Originally I had written a longer note, but eBay only lets you use 500 spaces. I wanted to include the entire story so eBay would understand the details in case I had to discuss it with them....

So I went about my business for the rest of the afternoon, hoping for the best outcome...a couple of hours later I got another email from eBay saying she had agreed to redo the feedback!  Whew!