Winning an argument

We've just walked through the process of returning some unsatisfactory goods purchased off eBay.

The item was a piece of child safety equipment, which was advertised as being ten years younger than it actually was. The condition of the piece was also slightly less appealing than the words which described it.

In these sorts of circumstances, it is easy for things to escalate very quickly, and for a war of words to erupt. Before you know it, you're in eBay Disputes.

Dale Carnegie once said the best way to win an argument is avoid it. I don't think he was saying 'Avoid conflict'; what he knew all too well is that when two people are shouting no one is listening anymore.

We had to find a way of (a) returning the seat (and quickly, as the seller told us he already had another buyer!); (b) getting a full cash refund; (c) expressing the reasons for our return of the item.

I think we both knew that the trickiest part would be (b): getting our money back.

Cara and I had a few good discussions all through the process about how to deal with a person who clearly didn't want negative feedback left, but who still had our cash and was trying to extract positive feedback out of us.

What was plain from the outset was that aggression was never going to achieve a good outcome. For anyone.

So instead we kept our cool, kept speaking calmly and with civility as we worked with him, kept referring to facts, tried to see things from his perspective (he didn't want the headache any more than us), and never referred to 'eBay Disputes' (which is an incredibly inflammatory term, whose mere mention heats up a conversation).

In the end, the item has been returned, we have our cash back, and the seller understands why we cannot leave him positive feedback (but he will at least get neutral for choosing to honour the refund, which we were grateful for).

It's a good outcome, I think. But I don't think there would have been any winners if we'd done the natural thing and followed our anger. It's good we had time to work through how we were going to respond.

Life doesn't always give us the luxury of that. So we need to act graciously and truthfully, seek wisdom, and hang on for the ride. And know there'll be times that we probably won't do any of those things well!