How do I deal with transaction defects and when to contact FBS support?

Sophio and Sophio FBS try to make selling parts online easy, but it is no secret that there will be problems with orders from time to time that are beyond the seller's control or Sophio's control.   Also, Sophio has three different departments within support.  We have 'design' support (making visual changes to your b2c site), FBS Support (Fulfillment by Sophio) order related issues, and Sophio Technical Support (configuration of your actual Sophio account/store).  This article is intended to help you know who to contact and what to expect when contacting us.

When things go wrong with a transaction, we refer to all situations as a 'transaction defect'.  This is not to be confused with a 'defective part' which is something that rarely occurs.  In fact, the number of parts we sell that are truly defective is less than 1 tenth of 1 percent (.001%).  Most of the transaction defects fall into the following category and make up our 8-10% return rate.

1. Part Does Not Fit 
2. No Stock (supplier had stock yesterday but had no stock when your order was processed)
3. Qty pack confusion (buyer thought he was getting a pack of 4 but really got 1)
4. Picking error (supplier picked wrong part from shelf)
5. Shipping error (invalid address)

When processing a transaction defect, our recommendation is for you to refund your buyer immediately, and move on.  If you cannot afford to risk a $40 refund that you may not recover, you should not be in the business of selling products online.    The goal when processing a defective order is to NOT get a bad buyer review and to NOT lose more money by spending time emailing, texting, chatting, or 'fretting' over something that is beyond your or Sophio's control.  We understand that sometimes this is not easy to do as a result of the 'cost' of the item.  This, however, is the cost of doing business on 'someone else's website' (eBay, Amazon, etc).  In most cases your buyer will return the item 'eventually' to us and you will receive a credit.  Our successful sellers report that 'refund shrinkage' is between 20%.  In other words, you will get 80% of your refunds from Sophio FBS.
 
Your expectation as a seller should be that 8-10% of your sales will be transactional defects.  This means if you sell 100 orders per month, you should expect to have 10 defective orders per month.  Since the average order size of a marketplace order is $40, your 'worst case scenario' is losing $500 in a month on transaction defects.  We arrive at that number by assuming a shipping cost of $10 for each of the '10' defective orders.  If your store achieves an 80% refund success rate the $500 in defects would be reduced by roughly $250 which means your 'loss' on defects would be $250.  If you then divide that number by the gross sales you can arrive at a 6.25 % transactional defect rate.    Knowing this information, you have two choices.  You can 'write off' the transaction defect rate as a 'cost of doing business' or you can raise your markup by 5-10% to cover the losses.  There really is no standard to follow in this, we are suggesting a though process to help you form your own strategy that is sustainable (profitable).

If you are experiencing more than a 10% transaction defect rate there is likely a problem with the listings in your marketplace store.  The problem can be a specific 'brand' or part type, or part number, or it can be a synchronization issue between the inventory your Sophio account sends to your eBay store.  Since Sophio does not control what is actually listed on your marketplace store, it is your responsibility to use the listing tools or the marketplace control panels to manage your listings.  When Sophio discovers a problem supplier, we remove them.  When Sophio discovers 'consistently defective items' we remove them.  
 
If you think there may be a configuration issue, please contact Sophio Technical support at support@sophio.com instead of FBS support which is fbs@sophio.com.  FBS support should be contacted when a defective order cannot be refunded for some exceptional reason.  Sophio Technical Support will immediately get to work on the analysis of your issue, but the time to resolve the situation can be between minutes and several days.  Some situations may require a scheduled webinar or phone call to review or resolve due to the nature of the issue itself.

If you have any suggestions as to how we might improve our resolutoin process, please share them with us by sending an email to support@sophio.com.


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