first feedback unfairly negative- will this ruin my chances?

[luminarphrases]

i put a book on, comments read- book is in very good condition apart from one chapter has underlining and comments

got back "The book was described as new and most were written in pen. not happy with that."
2/5

this is on amazon btw, i am well annoyed

Does the amazon site have any kind of complaints procedure where you can ask for feedback to be withdrawn if you feel it's inaccurate? Because it sounds like you did describe the book fairly and the buyer is misrepresenting what you said.

no, madamez, its very unfair. i have left a comment to his comment because you can't see the original listing, so i quoted what i put, but it specifically says that you can't make someone retract a statement

the only thing I would question is, what condition did you describe the book as? Not the detailed comment which you quote here, but the one word statement:

good
very good
as new

etc

because if the book did have comments in pen inside, I don't think it is ever acceptable to describe it as anything more than 'good', and that may be pushing it, I am out of practice with this

ghmm well if you did describe the book as "as new" then I think that was wrong.
you should have stated that it had been written in.

that said, it would have been nice of the buyer to contact you and ask for the money back or whatever instead of just leaving negative.

however, if it is your first ever feedback, then I would ditch the account and create a new one and start afresh

it was 'good', but i put very good in the comments because it is, apart from the underlining

It could be argued that a book with underlinings and comments, is not even in good condition, even if it is only one chapter. Would make that chapter useless to me, and I would be mighty pissed off.

(especially if academic book, as peoples brains work differently and would comment on other things as they work through the material)

Does not sound unfair to me, to be honest.

fair enough, qs, but as i put it in the description, do you not think it's a little unfair to then say, well its got underlining?

erm I am not sure, I think if the book itself was in good condition and you stated about the writing inside, that would be a fair description
but I don't think you should use the words 'very good' in your description
unless the book IS in very good condition, in every respect

'very good' is a book grading term with a specific meaning - it's worth looking into this if you are going to continue selling

I could say "this book is like new except for the big rip on the front cover" - it is accurate but also misleading

I think the buyer complaining that you said the book was as new, is unfair

because you didn't, did you

but possibly a result of the slightly misleading description - he may have skimmed and 'very good' was all that registered

it isn't your fault if he didn't read it all, but best to be very scrupulous and UNDER describe the quality of your books

fair enough, i will be more careful in the future. thanks all

you do get the odd twit, and what a shame your first comment was so harsh