THE COST OF CANCELING - Episode 78

https://linktr.ee/KarriKennedy

On March 14th, 2026 Whatnot quietly added a cancellation fee to their Terms of Service and the seller community is still catching up to what it actually means. I break down exactly what the fee is, what it costs you at different price points, the one free pass you get and how to find out if you’ve already used it, what it does to your account health and your payouts and more. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there guys. I hope everybody is doing well. This episode is going to be called The Cost of Canceling, and I'm going to veer off here for a second before I you're like, you can't veer off. You haven't even started. Okay, okay. Um, but here's what happened. I was gonna run the episode and and you know, do go to publish, and then I was like, eh, I need to get up and and walk around to get some stuff done and clean up my house a little bit. I walked into my entry and I saw this giant box, and the box had a bunch of little items in it, and then a giant picture that I had bought during a raid train about cats and kittens. It's a whole story, guys. You guys know I collect cats. It's a problem, it's a serious problem. I probably need mental mental help at this point for the amount of cats and ridiculous stuff I buy off whatnot that I do not need to buy. I'm sure you guys can feel that and understand what I'm talking about. Some of us have problems and I need to dial it back for sure, especially because divorce lawyers are not cheap. Okay, I regress. Anyways, so I opened up the box and I opened up the two items and I'm like, yay! But I heard as I was doing that, glass was broken. It was shattered the whole pit, it was a big picture, too. I mean, I'm I don't know the dimensions exactly, but I'm gonna go out and say it was like 26 by 20 or something like that. Huge box, huge picture. The glass is all broken, and then the glass even went into some of the fabric on the inside of the wooden frame part and it nicked it up here and there. So it's just I don't know how I would fix it. Obviously, I can get a piece of glass. Glass at Hobby Lobby is gonna cost me about what the picture cost, if not more. The picture was 35 bucks plus shipping, so for 45 bucks. I don't know how much the glass is gonna cost, but you know what I'm saying. And then to fix the NYX, it's just anyways. The whole point to this is I was devastated, frustrated, but I move on pretty quickly these days. So I was like, oh, dang it. And so I quickly went on to my purchases. I contacted the seller who I bought from before, who I love. Great seller on here, never had a problem before. I do think that the box was too big for the frame, and that you should not send small, tiny things with something that's real big with glass like that. Um, I have some upcoming shows on how to pack a box, but I probably would have divided this into two different boxes. I would have got a skinny flat box from the box store and paid the money for it. And yes, that adds money to it. So price accordingly, the box I usually get is about $9, $10. Maybe some of you guys get it cheaper, but I would rather get a big frame box, bubble wrap it, put the wrap, and do all that, and then take those other two items. And if I can't somehow tape them, or you know, they're lightweight items that aren't breakable, tape it onto it somehow so it's not shuffling around and giving an opportunity to break. Um, nothing should be moving in your packages. I think that's what happened. Those two things just kind of got jarred around, hit the glass, and broke it. And so that's a disappointing thing. Where am I going with all this? This is this is why, whoops, squirrel. Okay, but there is a point, I promise. Um, so my thing is whenever anything like that ever happens as a buyer or seller, like if you're a buyer, you should always reach out to the seller. Reach out to the seller, say this happened. I sent her, you know, three or four pictures. I said, This is so whatever. She was sad, I was sad, we both lamented and moved on, right? But she had the opportunity to say, Oh, I'll give you credit at my store, or oh, let me give you some money back through Venmo, or um, oh, I'm so, you know, disappoint, whatever. She could do whatever. That way I put the ball in her court and give her the opportunity to do what she wants to do. Or, as in this case, she said, just report it to whatnot. So I went to that item, I click on that item. If you guys haven't ever done this, you can do this with all of your purchases. Be on the up and up, don't be a jerk. Only do this if there's actually something broken. You've got to send in pictures, anyways. I think they're really cracking down on this. I'll get to that in a bit. Anyways, I sent them pictures, and then honestly, it was like a matter of what, four seconds or something for the response to come back to say I it was accepted and I will be reimbursed. I looked at it real quick, but I think it says something like three to four days, three to five days. So I will be a reimbursed. I think whatnot will send those pictures to USPS and say, hey, buddy, look, it got broken. I don't know how they decide and determine what that looks like because in this case, I really think this could have been preventable. On in this situation, I don't think it was USPS. I think it was more the seller in this situation. And like I said, I love her. I think she does a good job. I just don't think she was aware that when you send a picture or something like this breakable glass, you really, really need to pack it tight, and there cannot be any movement of anything else in that package. Okay. That being said, that is how you deal with a situation. And if you're a seller, you respond to those people. She responded within, like, I don't know, four minutes or something. Y'all need to be checking and see have your you know notifications for whatnot on. So if somebody does reach out to you that you know it's not a week later that you're getting back with them, you know, they're gonna go ahead and cancel. So just that is best practices for buyers, right? And and sellers. I mean, that's what you guys should do. I just wanted to throw that in before I get started because this is the cost of canceling, and you know, I didn't cancel the order, she didn't cancel the order, but it was still about customer service and how to handle that. So, that being said, um, I've worked on this episode for about two weeks here and there. Um, and and one of the reasons is because I really wanted to make sure I had all of the all of the info in here right for you guys and not steer you wrong. Um, basically, what happened is March 14th, um, which was like, well, about a month ago now, um, they updated the terms of service at whatnot. And so if you're a seller who has ever had to cancel an order or you might you think in the future you might need to, um, which is pretty much anybody, and I'm gonna give you some examples of that, you probably need to hear this. But also, if you're a newbie and this is all new stuff to you, I highly suggest you go get a pen and a paper so that you can write these things down and just you'll write down what's important, and that way you'll retain it and keep that information. Okay, so here we go. Um, they have changed what they're calling, and I think this is quote, seller initiated cancellations. Okay, this is something they don't they did not, you know, go, oh, here's an email, everybody's gonna get it. It just kind of showed up in the terms, so you might have missed this, okay. I think they might have talked about it in the seller academy or something, but it was not something that everybody knows about, and that's why I wanted to do an episode about it and give you some examples because you guys know I am the analogy queen. Okay, so here's here's what the deal is. If you cancel an order for any reason other than well, the buyer request it, right? Whatnot can now charge you a cancellation fee. Okay, we've had this, these conversations, you guys go back. I personally think a lot of the riff-raff happened after Mr. Beast came onto the platform. That's what I'm sticking to. I saw a noticeable difference, and I said that the more people that come onto the app, the more, you know, regulations, rules, and and you know, oversight there's gonna have to be. And sure enough, I said things like this are gonna come down the plank, and sure enough, it is. I predicted it. You can go back and look at previous, listen to previous episodes. Okay, so here's the fee. The fee is either three dollars or three percent of the total order, whichever is higher. And um, that's the total that includes the item price, your shipping, and your taxes. So they're taking the price, the shipping, and the taxes rolling it into one number, okay? Um, and then doing it. But just I don't want to math to that level, okay. I'm not gonna do that. But here's just a breakdown without the shipping and the taxes. So let's say you have an item that's $15 and you cancel it, okay. And I'll get to all the reasons you would cancel it in a minute here. Um, but you're gonna pay three bucks. If it's a $75 sale, you still pay just three bucks. But once it goes over a hundred dollars, uh percentage takes over because now you're over the hundred dollar mark. So let's say you have a hundred and fifty dollar sale that you cancel, now you're paying four dollars and fifty cents. Okay, if you have a five hundred dollar sale, you're paying per 15 bucks. And that doesn't maybe sound like a lot to you guys, but you know, the more volume you have, the more items you're selling, the more times you you cancel, and this is becomes part of your practice. If you do this, which I'm gonna tell you, don't do it, um, it's going to add up. And let's not forget the luxury sellers and the people who are on who here who are selling things like $800 purses, and then they grab the purse and they realize, ooh, there's something you know bad on it. I've got to cancel it. Well, if you cancel an $8,000 item like a purse, it's gonna be $240 that you're gonna have to pay to whatnot. That's not even the the taxes and the shipping that you know, whatever. Um, so that is, you know, that's a lot of money. Um, it's going to scale faster and higher for the people who have high dollar things and are canceling. But this is canceling from your part as a seller, guys, not the buyer. Okay. So here's the next thing. You get one free get out of jail pass. I say it like that because you know, when you're playing Monopoly, you get the little card. Um, one free pass, that's it. And then after that, you have to pay one time, one pass, that's it. Okay. So here's where it gets crazy. And at the very end of this, I'm gonna wrap up the whole episode with how what not can be better. But here we go. There's no indicator anywhere on that I could find. I've I looked it everywhere that says whether or not you've used your free pass and how to find it. I I went and I double-checked and I looked so that you do not have to. Um, but I I'm I'm gonna just save you the the the the time, okay, on this. You go up to your on your computer, go to the upper right hand corner, your logo, click on that, you then get into your seller hub, then you go to orders, okay, click on orders, and just below the orders heading, you're gonna see two different buttons. One one that's big and long says shows and marketplace, and the one to the right of that says all statuses. Okay. When you click on all statuses, it's going to bring you a drop-down menu. You're gonna scroll to the very, very bottom of that and you're gonna select cancellations, okay? Here, here's how crazy this is. If you're taking notes, keep up with this. You can rewind it and go back. Um, then when you click on your cancellation orders, you're like, yay, I'll find it here. I'll know whether or not I've used my one free get out of jail card. But that's not what you're gonna see because there's nothing that tells you whether it was the buyer or the seller initiated. Then there's no indication, nothing that says whether it there was a fee that was charged or whether it was waived. So it's just a list of the cat cancellations, and you have no idea what's what. Um, it's just the list. So this is an area I think whatnot, you guys can do better. Come on. Um, so I think if you're gonna have a policy that's gonna charge people money, right? It's gonna track defects, and sellers are going to, I think, moving forward, if whatnot's gonna keep adding, you know, more rules and regulations. I get it. I was a mom of six kids. One of my kids said I'm controlling, I'm like, yeah, you have six to eight kids because we fostered two. You have to be controlling, you have to have a level of oversight, and that's great, and that's fine. But you also have to have clear boundaries and clear information and state that clearly. And whatnot is not doing that here. They are not letting you know where that is. So they should tell you where the fee is applied, where you can find it, um, if the fee waiver is still available, because I'm not a big time $8,000 person, you know, and maybe I don't care about $240, you know, at that level. I don't know, but it still should be obvious and apparent. And that's something I really think. Sellers are running businesses on this platform, this is their bread and butter. Whatnot needs to do a better job giving straight answers and having this information clear as crystal. I mean, crystal clear, whatever. Okay, so how does Whatnot collect this money? Um, it's just a fee, okay? It's just um, it's deducted from your seller balance. Okay, and this is another thing that somebody was confused about. So there's two different things. You've got your ledger, okay, on your app, which is your transactions. That's all of your financial record where you can see everything, you know, the positives, the negatives, the red, the red, the black, every dollar moving in and out. That's called your transactions, which is basically a ledger, okay. Um, and you can find that under the seller hub. And then you click on financials and then you click ledger, okay? I think it should be called transactions, whatever. Um, I mean, it should be called ledger slash transactions something so people understand. But each entry has a date, an amount, and a message that describes what happened there. Um, and I cannot find anywhere that shows exactly how whatnot labels a cancellation fee. There's no message column, there's nothing. And um, so you know, I'm not gonna guess and and tell you that it's that I don't know what they're gonna do with that. I'm I just I don't know. So, what I do know is that if money came out of your balance after a cancellation, that's that's where it's going to be. Now, they're not very transparent, they're not giving it specifically, they're not like, oh, we took out X amount of money because this happened and so and so. That that's not what's gonna happen. You have to go and look this up, and this is just a transparency gap that Whatnot needs to address. Um, sellers should not be confused about charges, and I think overall, and I'm not gonna get into it, this is definitely an area that Whatnot can definitely clean up and fix. Um, so okay, here's uh when you won't be charged. Okay, here's here's the things when you won't be charged. Okay, so this is another place whatnot can fix, but let's be clear. Um, here's where when you're actually protected, okay. When the buyer requests the cancellation, then you don't have to pay. When there actually is shipping carrier issues, you know, snowstorm, that kind of thing, then you don't have to pay. When there's an order problem related on whatnot side, and there's some kind of computer mess up or something, then you don't have to pay, right? So if a buyer submits a cancellation instead of you, you will not be charged. Okay, listen to this again. If the buyer requests the cancellation, you are not charged. Okay, I said it twice, so you guys got it. Okay, and it has to be through the platform. They actually have to go click on the item and cancel it themselves. They can't send you a direct message and say, Hey, can you cancel that? No, you have to tell them the steps and make your buyer do it, otherwise it's gonna affect you. Okay, they have to go through the app so that you can accept it, and then there's no fee, okay? When when you accept it. Okay, hopefully that makes sense. I really hit it hard because there's been a lot of confusion about that, and I I don't get why, but hey, hopefully that cleared it up. Okay, so here's when you will get charged and and what it's gonna do to your account going forward, okay. Um, in these situations, whatnot says you will be charged. Um, okay, most of these situations that I'm about to give you, I've got some analogies here. You're gonna have two choices, right? Number one, you can cancel it on your own, and you're gonna incur a fee, and um, you're gonna get a ping to your account, okay? Otherwise, two, and this is what I'm gonna suggest, you reach out to the buyer first, you explain what happened, and you ask them to submit the cancellation through the platform, not through a direct message, right? And then you walk away with no fee and no pings on your account. And pings, we'll get to that in a minute. You know what I'm talking about, I think though. Um, anyways, okay, there's one exception to what I just said, but we're gonna get to that in a minute, okay? All right, number one, missing or missed place inventory. So let's say you run a show, you sell 10 things, and somewhere between packing and shipping, you realize that something is missing, right? Maybe it fell under the couch. Uh, you know, I I don't know. You just you thought you had it in stock, they got it from the buy it now, and you realize, oh yeah, it fell off the shelf and you swept it up last week. You don't have it in stock anymore. Something like that. Um, here's what happened to me literally yesterday. So I was packing the orders, they were all up on the tape packing table. I had 53 orders and we were getting them all ready. And my kid, Hayden, the 19-year-old, set a Coca-Cola down on the packing table, which hello, you do not put sodas on my packing table. Anyways, he usually helps me pack, but he was not feeling it yesterday. He did not want to help. And so Sarah was here. I was packing. I think he helped me with maybe one package throughout all 53 packages. Kids, in in some days it's good, some days it isn't. But, anyways, he put the Coke down, and uh long story short, the Coke spilled. Of course it did, and it went all over the I had a cloth tablecloth there, and I was panicked. I was like grief stricken. I was like, oh my gosh, grab the towels. He's like, calm down, mom, calm down. But here's what happened: it spilled over a vintage towel that I had just sold, right? So I quickly grabbed it, I sprayed it with um, what is it, shout, and I put it in the washing machine to run it, ASAP. And when I did that, I just kept moving, you know, and I was packing and dealing with cleaning up the coke and all the other stuff that was on the table. I should have stopped and taken a post-it and wrote a note down that said, hey, this is so-and-so's towels in the in the jur in the washing machine, don't forget it. Okay, but it gets worse. You guys are like, if you heard my last episode, you're like, oh my gosh. Um, yeah, there's a lot going on here. Anyways, I did not write that down and I completely forgot the towel. So whoever that was who ordered that towel from my last show and doesn't have it, I don't remember who you are. I didn't put it back in your box. The Coke wasn't my fault, but you get the point. Uh it genuinely things like this happened. So, what I should have done if it was glass and it broke is reach out to her, take a picture of the broken item, and say, Hey, you know, I don't know, Christina, here's what happened. You know, could you please go in and cancel that so that I don't get the ping? And most people, I've honestly, I've never had an issue. I've been on here for over two years, never had an issue. Most customers are kind, they'll they'll reach out. The only time, actually, I take it back, the only time I've had a problem. Is when somebody doesn't read their messages, maybe they're a new buyer or something and they they don't. I I think maybe, and I'm guessing here, guys, maybe in two years I've canceled like two things. I I really there's not really a major reason to do it. Um, but you get the idea. Um, if that buyer, whoever it was, has the towel, reach out to me. I have your towel, I will send it to you. Okay. Um, so reach out to your buyers, guys. Just be honest and ask them to submit the cancellation request through the app, and then you just click on a little button that's a red button, which I appreciate. Color coding, good job, whatnot. Um, you click on that button and you accept it, and everything happens. Okay. For future reference, though, to prevent all of this from happening, have your plan to sell physical stuff, you know, pulled, organized, put your stuff in bins, boxes, label your bags, whatever system works for you, right, guys. Um, you know, think of it when you're cooking. Professional chefs, they start by getting all the ingredients out, getting all the equipment out to have it, right? You guys need to be the same way. Have bins, have boxes, put the items somewhere so that you're not dealing with that. And for the love of, you know, oh, for the love of Pete, whoever Pete is in that scenario, don't put sodas on your table. Live and learn. But the the whole thing on this one is you could lose something. So if it's missing or misplaced inventory, reach out to the person. The second one is incorrect listing details. So maybe you listed um something as one item and you sold it as something else. Actually, it was maybe the wrong description or the size was off, or maybe the weight was off, or something serious, right? Um, you know, just think of it as a restaurant getting your order wrong. You know, um, you ordered the salmon, they bring you the chicken. It doesn't matter if it's an honest mistake. The this the situation is still not best. You know, if you get wrong food at a restaurant, you're sitting there while the rest of your family is eating their food and you haven't even got yours, it's it's a it's somebody's gotta fix it, right? So either hopefully the manager will pay for your food. This actually happened to us at Easter, but um the manager will pay for the food, or you know, they'll give you an extra free dessert or something. Um, and that's the way it should be too too here. So contact the buyer before you do anything when this is happening. If you if you messed up and it's a six-pound item and you put six ounces and you're trying to do it, you can work it out with them. Maybe you say, Hey, this happened, would you be okay with canceling it and getting it in the next order or whatever? You guys can work things out. Um, you just explain what happened, you apologize. I definitely apologize, come with a humble attitude, um, ask them to submit the cancellation, boom. And and you know, the thing is, this is about community and can communication. And I I talk about this all the time, but when you guys, you know, just step over the buyer or step over the seller one way or the other, it's not a good idea. Just reach out to people. Most people are kind. Okay, and before this, you know, take your time before the show to make sure that what's in your hand matches what's on screen, that you've got the right weights, you've got the right measurements, that all of that is good. Okay, the third one, the item condition is not matching. This actually happened to me too. Okay, so for example, you said you're holding it up and you're like, this is beautiful, it's wonderful, and then you find a crack or a chip or a stain or whatever. So this happened to me with the Coca-Cola thing. Um, after the show, I not noticed a little spot on one of the pictures that one of the girls had. And I don't know if it was there previously. I don't know if it came from the Coca-Cola. I truly just do not know. Um, but I didn't sit around and wait to send that out to the girl and then have her complain about it. What I did is I took a picture, it was a six dollar picture that she bought. I'm pretty sure she paid six bucks for it. So I took a picture, I sent it to her, I said, hey, unfortunately, I did not see this. I don't know when it happened, but I just wanted to let you know I noticed it. So I'm either going to, you know, give her, you know, six bucks back via Venmo or whatever, give her credit in my show, whatever. But I reached out to her to be preventative so that she doesn't complain, she doesn't go to whatnot, she doesn't give me a bad review. Do you see what I'm saying, guys? That's how you handle it. You don't hide, you don't hope that people didn't notice, you tell the truth, and if if you accidentally mess up, because we're all humans, you you you you mess up, you say you screwed up, you take responsibility, and then you protect yourself, you protect your your business, you protect the relationship. Okay. So um I just, you know, we'll adjust the price. And you know what? I think because I did that, I I think she will come back again. I think she will respect the honesty and the transparency. And and if she's not happy with the offer I gave her, I told her, if you're not happy with that, feel free to give me what you would like, you know, because at the end of the day, my goal is to make her happy, not just make a bunch of money and screw people over. It's to have this communication and this, you know, connection, anyways. Um, so long story short, how do you prevent this in the future? Inspect all your stuff before the show, not afterwards. Take lots of pictures. I know some people are only taking one picture and they're not taking a picture of the top, the bottom, the back, the underside, whatever. Take your pictures, look at things, clean things. You know, I I've gotten dirty things before. Wash them and see if there's spots on it or cracks or whatever. Everything um should be checked before it takes off. That's all there is to it. I think this is number four. I actually didn't put the numbers next to it. Changing your mind about the sale price. This is really, really bad. And I'm gonna I'm gonna give it straightforward, guys. The auction ends lower than you wanted, okay? And some people may be tempted to cancel it. And I've heard of this so many times, and I'm just gonna flat out say I think it's wrong, okay. This is one of the exceptions to everything about reaching out to your buyer. Um, that's not gonna help you here because this is completely on you. I have heard of people going on a show and them not getting the amount that they thought they were gonna get in the auction and then canceling it because they didn't make enough money. Guys, for reals, I mean, honestly, you have to think about this like putting your house on the market, right? If you put your house on the market right now, they're saying my house is worth like $617,000. The market's terrible right now. If I could make $585, I think I'd be impressed. But here's the point: if you list it at something and someone meets your asking price, what you're asking. Let's say I put my house on the market for $617,000. Okay, let's just say I do it, and then they offer me $617, I can't go, hmm, yeah, I changed my mind. I want $640 now because I expected a bunch of people to fight over it. That's not how it works. If you make a public offer and somebody accepts that public offer in public on live screen, that's it. That's a commitment. So anybody who has done that, I just think it's it's horrible. Don't do it. If you're not willing to run it for a dollar or three dollars or six hundred and fifty dollars or whatever, don't do it. Now, if it's an accident, like I mean, this happened to me the other day. I was doing a one dollar show. I accidentally hit the button and it said $30 still from something. And I said, Don't don't anybody bid on it, don't anybody bid on it. But somebody did, of course. Their fingers are fast, they bid on it. I said, just go in and cancel it, just put a cancel request, I'll fix it, you know? So that is different. This is what I'm talking about, is just being honest, guys. What not says it explicitly states that sellers are not permitted to cancel orders due to price dissatisfaction, and canceling for any reason puts you in violation of all of their community guidelines on top of everything else. So just don't do that. Don't don't be a jerk, okay? If you if you don't feel comfortable doing it here and running it at an auction price, then honestly put it on a different platform. Go to Poshmark, go to eBay, go to Facebook Marketplace, whatever. Don't do it here, okay? Because that's just wrong. We we just we did we just don't play that game. Okay, um, so know your floor price, be comfortable with it, and honor whatever that sales price is. Do not cancel it. Okay, unexpected shipping costs. I think this is number six. I'm not keeping up with the numbers, guys. Sorry. So the item sells, okay, and you go to ship it and it costs way more than you expect. Okay. For example, you're a new seller on here and you're like, oh, look, I've got a giant coat rack from the 80s. It's vintage. I'm gonna sell it. And you think that you're gonna sell it for 921 max shipping, and then you realize that sucker, because of how big it is, it's gonna cost you $129 to get it to somebody in Hawaii or something ridiculous like that. You cannot cancel it. You guys need to know what you're selling and how what you're doing. So if you're gonna sign up for one dollar, you need to know it. If you're gonna do free shipping, you gotta do it. I just dropped my worst mistakes ever episode right before this, guys. It it says something like worst mistakes ever. Um, and it talks about zero commission day and how bad I screwed up. But I'm not blaming anybody else, I'm taking responsibility for it, and that's what you guys have to do too. You you don't get to the you know, the register of the grocery store and realized you grabbed, you know, the wrong size, whatever, and say, Oh, but I want it for this price. You can't do that. The cashier didn't cause your problem, the the buyer's not causing your problem. You as the seller have to take responsibility. So you're not gonna cancel because, oh gosh, this is too big of a picture frame, or oh, this is too big of a golf club, or I don't have a box for it. Do not cancel, do not cancel, do not cancel. Reach out to your buyer, be honest with them, tell them the situation, ask them if they'd be willing to submit the cancellation, and then you go on. And I will tell you, this truly happened to me about a month ago. Um I I she's gonna, if she's listening to this episode, she's gonna know I sold this gigantic um brass uh is it a copper? It was copper or brass, big bin, and this thing was huge. And I went to ship it, but I had used all five of my um free shipping, whatever. And I said to her, I said, can we wait until another show for I if so I can send this to you differently? Because I've used up all my adjustments, and I should have done run her adjustment first, and I screwed up. You should always do the big packages first. That way, if there's any adjustments, those get taken care of. But that show that was the one, guys, where I had 115 boxes go out. It was insane. I did free shipping and one dollar starts, and it was insane. I was on for 13 hours. She totally understood. She was like, it's okay, Carrie, no worries. So right now I have her box and another girl's box, and I'm saving up items for them so that we can get a good box and send it out to them. Um, so it's these things are preventable, guys, if you know your weight and your size before you know your shipping cost. So don't go in and and cancel, just communicate with the seller, okay? Um, anyways, shipping surprises can happen only if you do not do a custom shipping thing. You can go in and do the profile. I've talked about that in other episodes. Okay, next one, I think this is number seven. Canceling and after generating your shipping label. Okay, so you print a label and then you decide not to ship it. This is another really, really bad thing that I think some people have done. Obviously, not very honorable people. Um, but basically, um, you know, this is like, I don't know, you've already completed the track transaction. So backing out at that point, you know, it's gonna create all kinds of problems. They're gonna say, I my box isn't tracking, I didn't get my box. What that's gonna reach out to you, whatever. So if you've decided that, you know, this was your great grandma, well, maybe you sold it, okay, and your great grandma walks in the room and goes, Oh my gosh, that's been in our family for 400 generations, you know, something like that. Um, you need to contact the once again, reached out to the buyer, ask them, tell them what happened, whatever. Okay. Um, the the big thing is don't generate the label first unless you have it in the package and it's ready to go out to the car. Do not print the label. That's just a whole nother thing. Okay. Um, what it does to your account. Okay, here we go. The dollar amount of the fee is almost the smaller issue here because whatnot is going to track what is called your defect free order rate. When you go look up, I'm gonna see if I can do it real quick. If I go to whatnot, is it gonna mess up my whatever? If you go to whatnot in the bottom in the seller hub, I'm afraid if I click on it during production here, it's not gonna work. But basically, you can go and you can see your um account health and your dashboard in your seller hub. And there's gonna be two numbers. One is how fast your packages are going out. I'm not sure what it's called right now. I wish I had this. Mine is at 100%. My other one was at 100%. That is my defect-free order rate. Right now it's 99.3 because some of my items have actually been broken. We had three cookie jars that went out, and I don't know how it happened, but it happened. Long story short, I'm really upset about it. I'm gonna work to change it. It changes every three months, okay. This little percentage thing, it lasts three months before it changes. So a lot of people are like, wait, my ratings are this my health isn't the same. Give it three months. It's just like the cells in your body. It will replenish, it will change, okay? But here's how the math works, okay? So if you have a hundred orders and you get uh flagged on one of these items that's messed up, it's gonna take your rate down to 99. Okay. If you have 50 orders and one gets flagged, it's dropping down to 98. So so you just have to be careful that these orders are going to affect your account health, okay? So the fewer orders that you have that have these defects, the better off you're gonna be. Um, and the more orders you have that cushion that, you know, the better. Um, but you need to know this number: 95%, 95%. Because if for some reason this defect-free order rate on your right-hand side when you're in that seller hub, if it ever goes below 95% and multiple times even for an extended period, whatnot's kind of you know iffy on that, like other things. But it says your account may be penalized and your selling access quote may be revoked, okay? So when your defect rate drops, your show is getting pushed down in the feed, too. Okay, guys. So this is affecting you. You want that seller hub, those numbers to be 100 and 100 or as dang close as you can be. So you need to be packing your packages very, very well and not canceling any orders because this is going to affect you. Here's how. So when that defect rate drops below 95 for sure, but the slower it is, I don't know the algorithm behind the wizard's curtain, you know, the wizard of oz kind of thing, but it definitely is pushing your show down the feed, meaning that if somebody is scrolling through looking um for what to find next, your room is going to be less likely to show up in front of them because why would whatnot algorithm keep sending it to people who are having all kinds of problems and they're having to deal with it? I mean, my kid right now, he works at Ace Hardware. This is my 16-year-old. He works at Ace Hardware, and um, they talk about what a good kid he is and how he's a hard worker and whatever. Well, there's been two kids above him that one they were both older, I think like 21 and 25, and they were not hard workers. They did not do a good job. They get they either quit or got fired. And so whatnot's gonna kind of look at it the same way. Are they going to continue to send people to an algorithm that has a good rating and a good review, that has good sales, has good timing, has good people in there regularly? Yes. Or are they gonna send it to the you know guy who's in the back of the hardware store on his phone the whole time, like my kid said that guy was who just got fired. They're gonna think about best business practices. I think that's great that whatnot does that. I think it's good. But what I'm saying is, guys, you have to be on your best, best behavior, right? Um, fewer people are gonna come into your room. That means less buyers, that means your existing followers might show up, but getting new people in there, that's gonna dry up. And so if you're working hard um to become a premier seller, you really need to think about this because premier sellers have to have 99% defect-free rate order at all times. Okay, they can't get down to 95. So go look right now, guys. Go get your phones, go to seller hub, go look this up and find out your account health. That's what you're looking at. That bar should be high. And if it isn't, y'all need to up your game. You need to work on your packing, you need to not cancel, you need to work on your communication with people. This is come on, guys, you can do this. Okay, now here's the other thing. This is um what catches a lot of sellers off guard. A cancellation or support investigation can come back and flag an order as a defect weeks and weeks after it's already happened. Because let's just, I'm making this up on the fly. Let's just say Cindy Lou is a flight attendant. She ordered a bunch of stuff off whatnot, it came to her house, whatever. It was two weeks before she opened it up. You can't, I mean, whatnot can't tell you when to open up your package. So maybe Cindy Lou opens up her package, it's all it was an Italian vase, you know, um, and it's from the you know, mid-1800s, and it was a lot of money. Now, boom, she's going to report it. So these they're gonna investigate that, and it could happen later. It doesn't have to happen just, you know, the original date or the day they receive it or whatever. You don't know. So you need to be realizing that too. You might think that everything's going fine, and then check your dashboard and realize that your numbers have shifted. So you need to kind of keep going back and checking your account health dashboard regularly, right? You could click into the defract free order rate thing directly from there, and it's gonna show you all of your history, your highlights, any recent issues. It's gonna give you tips on how to improve. It's all there, and I think everybody needs to make that a habit and worry about this. Be concerned about this, okay? Um, so you do not want to be blindsided by penalties, and you don't want it affecting the algorithm, affecting who's coming into your room, and then inevitably your sales and your money, right? So customer communication is always your best bet every single time. And um, yeah, just take care of that. Okay, where am I? Um, what matters in the long run is any percentage point on the dashboard matters. Yes, that's where I'm at. Okay. Um, next part star ratings and your time out, uh, your payout timeline and how to dispute a fee. Okay, this is kind of a big deal. So So the account health stars, all that. I can't uh I'm gonna have to do a whole nother episode. I'm gonna go really quick on this, but you have star ratings, right? Those star ratings are not the same thing as your account health. I'm just gonna drop that real quick. So if um if somebody goes in and gives you a bad rating, like you get the five stars or you get the one star or whatever, that is not the same thing. Those are two different things. So buyers can leave the ratings and the reviews for the orders that are canceled or never marked as delivered. And you know, there's that. It's two different things, right? Um, but the clean star rating does not protect the defeat rate. Okay, so the person like this item that just got broken, I am not gonna go in and give that girl a one-star rating. I am going to give her a five-star rating on everything else, if that makes sense, just because I'm a nice person and I know she didn't, it wasn't her intention to break it. So I'm still gonna go in and give her a five-star rating. But just remember that there are two different things that we're talking about, guys. Your account health is how fast the items are shipped, packed, you know, scanned, all that. And the other one is getting that they're defect-free. And then the other part, the star rating, is your whole overall profile rating, okay? Different things. Um, but where am I? Okay, so let's talk about the payout timeline thing on this. Um, because cancellations can mess with when you get paid. This isn't really an issue for me. It never has been, but I'm going to address it just because some people get really upset about this. I have seen so many people talk about this on Facebook uh groups. It's not even funny. Okay, so when you're very first starting out on whatnot and you're under the 1k and you're not getting your money until the buyer actually gets it and rates it, and you know, try it's been tracked, and UPS confirms the delivery and all the money is processed, and then you get your money, right? That whole process can take, you know, um take a while. So um if you request the payout, um and it and it takes another one to two business days to to hit your bank, right? So you're waiting and you're waiting and you're waiting. So, like let's say, um, let me how do I say this? Um basically it's just gonna take longer time if you are under the 1k sales, whenever you're dealing with getting your money back, cancellations, any of that kind of thing. Okay, guys, it's just the way it's gonna work. Um, so write write this down if you're a new person, okay? Once you hit 1,000 completed orders or $100,000, which most people don't do. Most people get 1,000 case in in actual sales, whichever happens first, it doesn't matter. That's when you're getting your um early payout. And early payout changes everything. You guys should know this, but if you've listened to any of the podcasts, I've got a whole series on it. It's called the 1K S 6S series, and it's like six parts talking about how to get to your 1K if you're a newbie. Go back and listen to that. Um, but anyways, you don't want to wait for delivery, you don't want to wait for anything. You you um if you get past 1k, you just print your label, the money moves. The second it happens, your money goes in. That's a big deal. Everybody wants it. But here's where cancellations come in, and they can hurt you. And here's the deal because your cancellations, your refunds for unfilled orders, they're gonna start going up. And whatnot can now delay your payout, okay, so you're not getting your early payout access. Okay, so you need to keep at least a 4.8 star rating so that you don't have that. And if you haven't hit 1,000 sales yet, and you're not in the the big kid area, that level yet, um, your cancellations are gonna slow your money down. Does that make sense? I feel like I might have gone a little too fast on that, but let's just say um you sent something and or you you ran something and now you're gonna cancel something, that's going to affect your ratings. That's going to affect your money coming. Okay. So you really need to think about this, okay? Um, losing your early payout money is more than annoying. It's gonna change your whole direct deposit and waiting for the mail and all that, okay? So let me go through this real quick. I have this, I know I'm almost an hour, guys. I hope you're keeping up with me. Okay, how do you dispute a fee? So let's say you've got um what happens when you get hit with a cancellation fee and you think that you should not have gotten that charge at all, okay? Here's the process. Um, this is this is a fee that whatnot has given you because somebody it is um you had to cancel and you don't think it is. Okay, let's just go. Um, you're going to go to your account health, the in the seller hub where I talked about, right? And you're gonna look at the policy standing section. There's a place um where violations from the last, I think it's 180 days, that's where it is. And you're gonna reply to the email that you got from trust and safety at um not hashtag at wait, hold on, me think of what it's called. Trust and safety the at symbol whatnot.com. So t-s-t-a-n-d s-a-f-e-t-y at sign whatnot.com. You tell them what happened and anything that supports your case. So if a charge was pulled from your account, you can apply it um to that app, okay? But you have to do this within 14 calendar days. You have 14 days to submit a a an appeal and give them the whole picture. So, what happened, what you think went wrong, any photos, a screenshot shot, tracking information, anything that you can grab to tell the story. And I think this is something that people are really like concerned about right now, especially there's been a lot of talk that somebody says, I know I packed that package, I know I sent that package, and the person's saying that they didn't get it, the tracking's not there, they never got it, whatever. Um, and so you know, it it is it is an issue, guys. You just have to submit the appeal, like I said, if it happens. I don't ever have these issues or problems. I don't know what categories have it more. I don't know, but I know it does happen. So, anyways, if you submit it, you're supposed to hear back within two days, and that's the whole process, but it's not a guarantee. You're you're there's just no guarantee. Every time anybody buys or sells on here, there's a trust level, and sometimes people are breaking that trust, either on the seller's end or the buyer's end. It just is what it is. Um, so, anyways, that's the process of how to do it. I I'm gonna talk about what I'm thinking is kind of a double standard on this because buyers can request a cancellation up to 24 hours after a purchase, okay? But you as a seller have 48 hours to accept or decline. And accepting a buyer's cancellation request doesn't affect your health at all, right? So if a buyer changes their mind and goes through the app the right way, you accept it, there's no penalties, whatever, okay. But if you cancel it, okay, you've got a fee, you've got a defect, you've got a potential payout delay, you've got lower visibility in your feeds. I mean, it does not seem like it's fair, and I get that, guys. That is the cost of doing business, right? The seller community is very vocal about this, and they're saying that people are canceling, and it's just it's frustrating. And I and I get it, I get it. Um whatnot is not really paying attention to it, they're not really doing anything about it. It just it is what it is. Um, people canceling all the time, especially after big shows, long shows, people do it. I allow them to cancel all day, every day. You will never see me say no cancellation, read the rules, whatever, because that isn't part of the rules, guys. You and your show might want to have all that verbiage on there and think you're all cool. Oh, you absolutely no cancellations. Well, you're gonna be hurting yourself because the whatnot policy is definitely geared more towards the buyers here. It it it is not a fair, it is not a fair system. This is the double standard for sure, for sure. But once again, going back to business practices, there's a saying back, I mean, I'm from I was born in 1971, guys. I I have been in lots of businesses, I've I've owned businesses, I've been a principal, I had a gift basket, executive gift basket business back in the day. I've waitressed, I've had lots of jobs. I I worked at Josky's when it switched over to Dillard's, guys. I I have been there for a long time. And what the the policy always was is that the buyer is always right. That I know we don't say that very often anymore, but that's the case. The buyer is always right, period. And I think that that's that's where what we're dealing with. So the sellers get really upset because sometimes it's not fair, it's not, it's never gonna be. Um, so the sellers can get canceled for uh penalized for canceling, but the buyers don't have any skin in the game, and you know, they they can do it if they want to. Um, so I I think I have a note in here somewhere. Oh, here, okay. So yes, I do. Here's my real life example. So I had the big show with 13-hour show. I had 75 people in the room, lots of energy, lots of people buying, and a lot of people said, Hey, what's the blue and white stuff? And I was like, Oh, I have an upcoming blue and white show. And they're like, pull it out, pull it out. I wasn't even gonna do it, but peer pressure led me to do it. Anyways, I ended up holding up this blue and white beautiful um uh what is it called? A teapot. It's a gorgeous teapot. I still have it. You guys can see it in my upcoming show. I go on today at 4 30. Um, anyways, it went for $68. And I was like, yeah, score, because I was happy with that price. I was pretty happy. Within, I don't know, 30 minutes of the show ending, she canceled it. And she said her granddaughter, um, this is, you know, you always get interesting cancellations, but she said her granddaughter was playing with her phone. And I was just like, okay, guys, if you're on whatnot, don't let your granddaughter play with the phone. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if it really happened, whatever. I allowed her to cancel it. The reality of that is it pretty much bites. Um, I accepted it. Am I gonna get $68 next time I run that? Probably not. That stings a little bit. That is the nature of this business, though. You're gonna have some wins, you're gonna have some losses. Any job, any business, anywhere in the world, guys, you're gonna have things, you know, like this happen. So I think that the best practice here is that you accept it, you move on, and you work on your next show, you know. Um you she she canceled, so it didn't affect me. I accepted it. I didn't cancel. That's the key factor here, right? Um, so but anyways, I would also say that something that you can do as a preventer, as a preventer, as a as a seller to prevent buying cancellations, honestly, is if you they're thinking it over and they're mulling over to the decision, you can do it really fast. And I'm not saying that that's I don't feel like that's deceitful. I feel like that's what my job is anyway. I'm doing my job well. I do ship fast. I live right next to a post office. I like to ship to get the stuff out of my hallway and out of my room and go. If you're one of these people who are on here and your sales are two, three, four days to ship, which it shouldn't be, it should be under two days. But if if you're taking forever to get it out, they have more chance in their brain to mull that over and ask for a cancellation. So maybe that's one of the reasons I barely ever get cancellations. You know, I I barely ever have do. But I mean, if you're you've got 24 hours to request a cancellation, and if I've already packed it, printed up the label, dropped it off at the post office, um, you get what I'm saying. I get to do that pretty quickly. I'm not sitting around waiting 24 hours for that to happen, right? You don't have to wait, you can just do it quickly. Um, but, anyways, when when a cancellation comes up to you guys, it's your choice to accept it or not. I personally think you should accept it and just call it the price of business. That's my my take on it. Um, okay. Um, I'm trying to wrap up. Say someone comes into the show and they buy one item, and oh, here's where I'm at. I know this is something that has helped me. This is just another business practice. This is the bonus plan, guys. This is something I do that I do mostly for my return customers, people that I know, but I'll do it for a lot of people. And here's what I do: the golden rule treat others as you want to be treated. So if somebody comes into my show and they're only by one item, instead of making them pay shipping, I will say, Hey, guess what? I'm going on Thursday night. If you go and cancel that order, I can hold it for you and you can come back to the show Thursday night. I'm gonna have more inventory, and then that way I can send you six items instead of one item. Okay, so that's a win-win for me. That's a win-win for them, that's a win-win for the post office. I mean, I feel like that is just a really great way. Um, instead of them paying for one item, they're paying for multiple items. And yes, the only downfall to this is that you have to store their stuff. You have to label their stuff, you have to hold on to them. But I'm telling you, I have been doing this for two years now, whether it was books or clothes or jewelry, any of my categories, and it really does work. You get repeat customers, they like you, they appreciate you doing that. It doesn't, it's no skin out of the game for me. I have more opportunity to make money, better for them because they're not paying too much for shipping. It's just a really great way to use the cancellation as a tool instead of it being a problem. That's just my take. Okay, I'm gonna wrap this up with how whatnot can be better. Okay. Um, the policy makes sense. I get what whatnot's doing. Sellers who cancel because the price didn't go high enough and whatnot saying that they that shouldn't be allowed, those people totally deserve a consequence. I think it's horrible and awful if somebody is like, oh, I've got this diamond bracelet and I want $950 for it, but they started at $1 and it goes for, you know, let's say $450 and then they cancel it because they wanted $400 more or something like that. That is wrong. And I think whatnot should come down on that. I think it's great that they're doing that. But there are a lot of policies where whatnot is not being as transparent and telling people what they should do. And so I'm gonna go over that real quick. You can cancel and not listen to the rest of this, but this is me talking to Whatnot now. Okay, so when Whatnot says a fee may, quote, may apply outside, um, if the cancellation was outside of your control, that's their wording, quote, outside of your control. What the hell does that mean? Because they don't define that. Um, they don't they don't let you know that. So if you USPS loses your package before it gets scanned, is that outside of your control? If a weather emergency or natural disaster tornado hits or something, I'm pretty sure that's outside of your control. Um, if the platform has a technical issue and you know does something, is that outside of your control? I mean, I I can guess on some of this, but they need to be very transparent. They need to get their lawyers in and give examples or get the verbiage right because just being so ambiguous on this is not good. Um, whatnot has no list. It really they really don't know. Um, they also have wordage like um less likely to be charged. What does that even mean? Um, are you going to charge me or are you not going to charge me? Because that's not really an answer. You know, when they have verbiage like that, that's very ambiguous and may or likely, it's not specific, and they need to work on that. And on top of that, there's no published cap on how high that fee can go for that 3%. I don't know what the highest dollar item ever sold on Whatnot is. I think I that'd be fun to go look up, but they need to have caps on fees and things like that. Another thing I wrote was um the whole cancellation history view on the orders page, it doesn't tell you which cancellations were seller initiation or buyer situation, it doesn't tell whether a fee is charged, it doesn't even tell you whether your one fee, your get out of jail free or whatever card has been used or not used. You don't see this stuff. So if whatnot wants us to be transparent and whatnot wants us to work our asses off and whatnot wants us to do, do, do, do, I think that if it's an $11.5 billion platform, that whatnot needs to have some skin in the game and do a better job. I think they need better customer service for the sellers. We need better, clear language, we need um, you know, just things defined better. And um, yeah, I don't think that's too much to ask. I think if the golden rule applies for us and from buyers to sellers, that whatnot as an overall app should also consider treating us, you know, with that same level of disclosure, transparency, honorability, helping us out, letting us understand and know. Um, so at the end of all of this, um, treat your buyers the way you would want to be treated. Um, if you were on a show, honor what you sell, know what you have, you know. Um, and if something goes wrong, be responsible, you know, be a human, communicate fast, fix it, because that's what good sellers do. And um, oh yeah, I had I threw in some extra notes. Sorry, guys. Um, okay, so I actually have more. Sorry. Here we go. A little bit longer. Um, whatnot, I'm going through this list a little bit more because I threw that in and now I've got this. Sorry, bad, bad note taking here. Um, here we go. Number one, um, whatnot, transparency needs to be better. Sellers deserve more. Um, whether their free waiver has been used or not, I already mentioned that. What else? Um, show sellers exactly what the cancellation fee looks like when they hit it under the financial page. I should just have a show just for whatnot. You know what? I think I might do that. Whatnot change this stuff. I'll just add that to a whatnot change this stuff because I have too many things listed here in my notes, and my time has already gone over. Um, so I will make that in the future. Whatnot, listen to me because you can make the uh platform better. Um, anyways, overall, you know, I love whatnot. I love the platform, but I definitely think that there are some areas they need to fix. And I'm I'm since I have too many notes here, I'm just gonna make it a whole nother episode. Sorry about that, guys. You're getting the real bonus treatment here. Um, okay, so uh what do I have? Okay, I guess that's it. So, um, guys, if anything in here was beneficial to you, even though I know I was kind of squirrel and it was not maybe my best episode. If any of it was helpful to you, if anything made sense, please give me a five star review. Give me a good rating. If you didn't like this episode, you can message me. There's a little button in the notes. You can message me and say, Carrie, get your get your act together and and do a better job next time. Um, I will say this is like my first. Fourth episode in like probably two or three days. So I am hustling to get these out to get the information out. I did have a lot of information here in my notes. It was like two weeks worth of you know stuff. So I I apologize for that. Um, but please go listen to other episodes. Please share this out. Please listen to um other episodes and share those out. Okay, also you guys can text me at 832-607-1526. You can book a 30-minute consult for with me for just 20 bucks. Most consults are about an hour to an hour and a half. Um, I love talking to new business people, people even who are a little bit older who are trying to up their game. I love it. You know, even actually, um, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull this up because somebody messaged me just a bit ago, and I just I'm gonna mention her because I appreciate it when you guys do this. Let me pull her up. Oh my gosh, I say that, and then I'm I'm in the wrong platform. Ah, okay, here we go. In my messages, I'm clicking. Um, it was a girl named Lauren Wears Flowers. I'm just gonna read what Lauren Wears Flowers bonus treatment. Lauren Wears Flowers. She said to me, she said, hello, I'm listening to your newest podcast episode, and it reminded me to give you an update on this. I was hoping to sit down and do all the math so I could give you a detailed rundown, but I haven't done it, so I'm just gonna give you the summary. And then she goes on to talk all about her business and how she had fun and how she's learning and and all of that. And and I just, you know, high five to you guys who send me messages, who give me the you know, kind words of appreciation. I don't get paid for this podcast, I don't charge for this podcast. In fact, I pay $100 for this, plus I don't know, like $40 over in the Linktree thing. I pay to give you good information. And if it's not, you know, exactly what you want or how it's done, please do do not give me a one-star review. I am spending my time and energy. And if you don't like it, feel free to message me like Lauren Wears Flowers did. Um, I really would appreciate it. Okay, that's it. Uh, I hope you guys are having a great day. I have a show today at 4 30 Central Standard Time. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm gonna be flying by the seat of my pants. Um, but I would love you to come. It's under the name Carrie K A R R I, Kennedy K E N N E D Y. And um, yeah, I hope to see you guys later. Have a great day. Thanks so much. Bye bye.