How Ebay wastes its own money....

I've always said that the two killer apps for the internet were shopping and porn. Those two items drove a lot of new internet technology. Porn is the reason you can see video clips on websites. Do you actually think that an entrenched bureaucracy like TV would acutally want to put their news clips on a website for people to see without commericals?

Anyways, I have been selling a lot of the stuff I had stored in the basement (for decades). I play fair, sell cheap and follow the rules. Only, and that is only, do I look for help when something is not covered by the online help. Ebay does follow the twisted ways of corporate America with respect to customer service. You know the drill--hire the cheapest labor and hope you get lucky. If I were to run a company, I'd rather know who was interfacing to my customers rather than hiring whoever I could get to take chicken feed.

I have a problem with leaving feedback. There is always more important things to do with my Ebay account that keep up with that. Besides, I'd rather find out what my customers say about what I sent them. I don't want to leave positive feedback then this idiot does nothing than complain when he gets the stuff. Fortunately that has not happened. You do get the odd anal orifice that insists on telling you how you are listing things wrong, how you are describing things wrong, and that THEY KNOW BETTER. I have a method of dealing with people like that. You nod and smile and walk away. DO NOT ENCOURAGE AN IDIOT!

To pick up the story, I, being a good Ebayer, decide to leave some feedback. The problem is, every time I leave multiple feedback, for more than one item/person, nothing gets saved. Everything I left feedback for is still on the list. WTF?! I try this over a period of several weeks and it still comes out the same. All I can do is leave feedback one at a time.

So I decide to go for help. Ebay is unique in their way of rationing Customer Service. First you have to click through the helps faqs until you reach a contact page. Now you can't just leave your question. That is not allowed. You have to select a canned question (and, of course, you know that virtually none fits my problem) and then they give you a phone number and a code. The code is good for about an hour, after that you have to go through the whole process again to get a new code. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I get the phone number and my special code. I call. You know the drill--lots of menus and the entry of the code, all the while you are inundated with reminders that help is available quicker on the website! Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I finally get to the warning about monitored phone calls (for Quality!), then it clicks over to a busy signal. I try several times until my hour is up. Same busy signal. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I relent and leave an email and the website promises me that they will be back to me within 48 hours. This part is at least true (for the first email that is....more to come). I made an unfortunate mistake when composing that email. I started by leaving a detailed account of my problem, then complained about the problem getting through on the phone.

Yes, you guess it. I got a email saying that they're sorry I had problems getting through on the phone after which they copied, directly from the website, the page on how to call into Ebay.
Not a word on feedback. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I stayed calm, told them they should be ashamed of themselves that they did not even come close to addressing my issue and if they worked for me, I'd have fired them. Then I told them to go back and read my email.

This time it took 4 days to get a response. To be frank, I didn't expect to get any response. This time they told me they were sorry I was having problems with feedback and copied into their email the whole webpage on how feedback works. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I had less restraint this time in reply. In gist, I told them they had better get to work answering my email because I wasn't going to go away. I was not going to get frustrated, that they would continue to hear from me.

This time it took a week to get a response. During that time I was seriously thinking of doing the serious detective work to get a phone number to reach somebody in charge. And, yes, they finally did look into my problem and answer my question satisfactorily.

Seriously, I laugh out loud every time I hear that canned voice telling me that my call is important to them. When you get the above kind of behavior, you realize you are not important and they just want you to go away. The sick thing about this is that if I pressed this issue about customer support, some poor email-answering slob will get fired for doing the exact process that some director or vice president has told them to do. It's those anal orifices that should be fired.

Finally Ebay sent me a survey on how my call to customer service went. After I finished laughing, I filled out a survey of canned answers (nowhere to really tell them what happened) and gave them all zeros. Mainly because there was nothing lower than zero or greatly dissatisfied.

You would expect them to look into it and want to know what went wrong. Ha! I don't expect to hear from them. That wouldn't be in the vice president's process.