Keep The Customer Satisfied

I ordered a pair of cheap strap buttons off eBay to go on the project guitar. They hadn’t turned up after a week, and I was on the point of emailing the seller when I received a card off Royal Mail stating there was insufficient postage on a letter addressed to me, and I’d need to pay £1.50 to get it delivered.
I assumed (rightly) this would be the missing strap buttons and grudgingly paid up. The strap buttons were no longer quite as cheap as I’d originally thought, but we were still under a fiver, so I didn’t go demanding a refund, but did leave a fairly neutral feedback on eBay mentioning I’d not expected to have to pay a penalty on the postage. And that would be the end of it as far as I was concerned.
The seller was not happy with my comments though and swore blind there was sufficient postage, it was only a very light, very small item. I pointed out that the penalty was because the overall thickness of the packet exceeded the maximum allowed for a “letter”.
This he conceded, and apologised. Queried why I didn’t ask him for the £1.50 back. I said I didn’t think it was worth the bother and would have totally wiped out any profit he had made. I accepted it was a genuine mistake and - on that basis - would withdraw my earlier feedback. Again, I assumed the matter was concluded.
But then I received another email saying he’d (unprompted) paid £1.50 back to my account and attaching a link to modify my feedback - if I felt able to do this now.
I understand now that my one neutral feedback could have a bigger impact than you might think on his seller rating, so decided to change my feedback to positive, with a particular emphasis on the polite and friendly way he had dealt with the matter all along.
He didn’t have to do what he did. But the effort he went to in order to turn my unhappy experience in to a positive one made a big impression. It was only a very small transaction but the seller really did do his utmost to make sure I was eventually fully satisfied with my purchase.
A lot of much larger companies could learn a lesson there…