Disappointment in Ebay

[rudeh-7551]

As an occassional seller with high quality items, I am disappointed that ebay has no way to talk with a customer service person.  It is clearly strickly a transaction business.  I needed to talk with someone--it did not, could not happen. Every step of the way I was blocked from speaking to a human being, only a robot. or directed to another page of documents to read and study.  Warning to future sellers--never expect any assistance from a  person.  I don't have time nor interest in reading through pages of documents, videos.  Why not set up a easy steps for occassional high end users who are not interested in a career selling on ebay.  

[chapeau-noir]

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@rudeh-7551 wrote:

As an occassional seller with high quality items, I am disappointed that ebay has no way to talk with a customer service person.  It is clearly strickly a transaction business.  I needed to talk with someone--it did not, could not happen. Every step of the way I was blocked from speaking to a human being, only a robot. or directed to another page of documents to read and study.  Warning to future sellers--never expect any assistance from a  person.  I don't have time nor interest in reading through pages of documents, videos.  Why not set up a easy steps for occassional high end users who are not interested in a career selling on ebay.  

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You have to read even 'easy steps' - try the FAQs - I'm not sure how they can broken down even more simply.  It's pretty rare that someone even needs to contact CS for a smooth transaction? If you're wondering about your pay-out, the step by step instructions say 30 days for new users.

[mkdeals9534]

I always have this problem what I found helped me was to chat with the robot and ask to speak to a agent and they will ask you what the problem is and then just repeat that you want to speak to agent and they will give you 3 options 1 would be to call you or to chat with a live person or to send a email and they will reach out to you    

[mtgraves7984]

"I needed to talk with someone--it did not, could not happen. Every step of the way I was blocked from speaking to a human being, only a robot. or directed to another page of documents to read and study."

@rudeh-7551 

We cannot talk, but I promise that all posters here are human beings. Regarding "documents", consider us your Cliff Notes. What's up?

[toysaver]

"Every step of the way I was blocked from speaking to a human being, only a robot. or directed to another page of documents to read and study."

In all possibility the very answer you need is available on those pages.   EBay would have to quadruple fees to pay for all the customer service calls that are already answered in their policies. 

[tobaccocardyahoo]

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@ryanrobyn wrote:

this is why Ebay is ranked worst in customer service of any big company

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In my experience, it is not the case. It isn't even the worst seller support for Internet marketplaces.

[gurlcat]

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@ryanrobyn wrote:

this is why Ebay is ranked worst in customer service of any big company

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🤣Uh, no it is not.  If you think you read that somewhere lets see the link.  If it's real I guarantee the "big companies" in the survey do not include any of the airlines, cable/internet companies, or cellular networks. Even just among online sales sites, I doubt eBay would rank lower than Amazon.  

[reallynicestamps]

@gurlcat 

How refreshing to see understandable disappointment expressed with the word "disappointed" as opposed to purple passion hyperbolic rage,

The worse the spelling the greater the passion.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Consider the possibility that the difficulty in reaching a human being, which many complain about, reduces the possibility of receiving an incorrect opinion of what Ebay policy is than if one actually reached a human being who has not been to law school and experienced in applying that rules and regulations to specific situations.

Imagine what the seller fees would be like if they had to place lawyers in the support groups to answer the questions which would be obvious if all sellers were prepared to run a retail business.

[gurlcat]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

@gurlcat 

How refreshing to see understandable disappointment expressed with the word "disappointed" as opposed to purple passion hyperbolic rage,

The worse the spelling the greater the passion.

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If I had a dollar for every time I've seen "your a idiot" in social media ..... actually, no dollar needed; the irony is delightful enough.  

[broto_64]

I just want to add that being self-employed I pay for an app to handle my calls, especially those not in my contacts, and that's because something like 90% of my incoming calls are telemarketers.

Out of the other 10%... A good half are literally customers who need me to walk them through a simple procedure (I call this hand-holding, these people need me to talk them through) and these people will call time and again, for the same reason, and the same simple procedure. This can go on for years, same people, same call, same reason, same simple procedure, time and time and time again.

Another solid percent are people who are old-fashioned and prefer calling even thou texting would've been far more efficient and faster. 

Last but not least are those with the obvious questions, like say I'm representing an auto repair shop and the first question they ask is "do you fix cars?" So then we get into small talk, the requisite hi-how-do-you-do-fine-yes-thank-you-and-yourself-yes-I-am-good-thank-you-very-nice-yes- and finally we get to "how can I help you?"

And it used to be company representatives had no choice, but in terms of profit this kind of stuff chews up labor hours. Something like 5% (and yes that is a bit of a guess) of calls are of an actual nature that require my interaction and I'm actually glad they called because yes, it is one of those things.

There is no way around it, it's a sheeple thing and I can only imagine that is a good part of the reason ebay corporations in general make it so difficult to get a hold of a human.

[gurlcat]

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@sin-n-dex wrote:

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@fern*wood wrote:

Usually you can reach a rep using Facebook.  I wouldn’t trust phone reps for much anyway. 

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FB reps are often bots, unless they have to look up something on your account. I had a couple questions to ask and the bot regurgitated in seconds verbage from their website (which I can read myself, I wanted someone to interpret it for me, since it's vaguely written and open to interpretation).

Even my human interpreter couldn't understand one of their policies. I was told it means whatever they want it to mean when they're ready to enforce it. Adding a word to the policy would have made it clear, but it's vague so that I wouldn't be able to tell if I'm violating it or not.

C.

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Well poop.  I guess it was just a matter of time before they got too much traffic to handle fully with English-fluent human agents, namely fellow-or-former sellers like a lot of them were a couple years ago.  Thing is, AI has gotten good enough to sound really human sometimes.  Now that I think about it, I'm not sure what I got the last time I used EFB.  The responses weren't instantaneous like you're describing; they took hours, but the last reply from "Kim" left me scratching my head.  I had asked if she tried a specific thing about my case, and she said "That's a really good question.  I did (such-and-such with "the relevant information") but beyond that I can't be more specific."  -But I had asked her what SHE did, so she shouldn't have had any trouble with specificity.  Also if if was a great question then why be cagey with the answer?  -It didn't occur to me at the time that she might be AI, but now I think it's pretty likely.  DANG IT!   

[broto_64]

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@gurlcat wrote:

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@sin-n-dex wrote:

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@fern*wood wrote:

Usually you can reach a rep using Facebook.  I wouldn’t trust phone reps for much anyway. 

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FB reps are often bots, unless they have to look up something on your account. I had a couple questions to ask and the bot regurgitated in seconds verbage from their website (which I can read myself, I wanted someone to interpret it for me, since it's vaguely written and open to interpretation).

Even my human interpreter couldn't understand one of their policies. I was told it means whatever they want it to mean when they're ready to enforce it. Adding a word to the policy would have made it clear, but it's vague so that I wouldn't be able to tell if I'm violating it or not.

C.

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Well poop.  I guess it was just a matter of time before they got too much traffic to handle fully with English-fluent human agents, namely fellow-or-former sellers like a lot of them were a couple years ago.  Thing is, AI has gotten good enough to sound really human sometimes.  Now that I think about it, I'm not sure what I got the last time I used EFB.  The responses weren't instantaneous like you're describing; they took hours, but the last reply from "Kim" left me scratching my head.  I had asked if she tried a specific thing about my case, and she said "That's a really good question.  I did (such-and-such with "the relevant information") but beyond that I can't be more specific."  -But I had asked her what SHE did, so she shouldn't have had any trouble with specificity.  Also if if was a great question then why be cagey with the answer?  -It didn't occur to me at the time that she might be AI, but now I think it's pretty likely.  DANG IT!   

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I've thought that too, got the same impression and then...
Came to the same conclusion, can't ever have anything nice in this world.

And here's the kicker, they probably got overwhelmed by people with questions such as "how do I turn on my computer?" or "Do you think my widget is a good thing for me to sell on ebay?"

Come to think of maybe they even got trolled endlessly by FB spambots offering friendship requests.

[gurlcat]

You know, it wasn't too long ago (definitely within the past year) I recall a post where the very first reply was a recommendation to try EFB, but then just a few replies later someone knew the answer/solution to the OP's problem and posted it.  Then someone else replied how EFB  is getting recommended here way too often, too soon, and they basically predicted what we're seeing now.   A handful of the members here have the contact information ready to paste, and do so whenever the OP mentions that they couldn't get the help they needed from phone or chat CSR's.  In a lot of cases I think it's a good recommendation, but sometimes it's clearly a matter of the OP having messed up their own situation by not being familiar with policy, or (like in the aforementioned case) someone here knew the answer, and the person who recommended EFB did so simply because they didn't know the answer.  

So yeah, there probably ended up being lots of sellers going to EFB as a FIRST resort rather than a LAST one as it should be.  And my god, you are probably right about them getting spammy Facebook stuff too.  Also I have no idea about this, but isn't EFB strictly for U.S. sellers, and could they also be having to field contacts from other-country eBay users?  

So, here's a thought. -Why were the big social media companies where eBay positioned its' most knowledgable and powerful (as in, able to get into accounts and do stuff) agents?  Why not HERE?  Just like Facebook, this Community has both open public feeds and private messaging, so why can't the agents be reachable here instead of the open wilderness???  

[broto_64]

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@gurlcat wrote:

You know, it wasn't too long ago (definitely within the past year) I recall a post where the very first reply was a recommendation to try EFB, but then just a few replies later someone knew the answer/solution to the OP's problem and posted it.  Then someone else replied how EFB  is getting recommended here way too often, too soon, and they basically predicted what we're seeing now.

So, here's a thought. -Why were the big social media companies where eBay positioned its' most knowledgable and powerful (as in, able to get into accounts and do stuff) agents?  Why not HERE?  Just like Facebook, this Community has both open public feeds and private messaging, so why can't the agents be reachable here instead of the open wilderness???  

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No matter where they hide, their secret won't last long.

Once the cat is out of the bag it's just a matter of time.

Why did my account get suspended?

No I was not selling counterfeits.

What I do think would be good...

Is if somehow ebay would direct all their customer service questions here, that way we could get overwhelmed ! Of course the ebay community is likely the best kept secret, more so because most folks don't want to wait for an answer, also it's not the easiest thing to find (and come back to).

[reallynicestamps]

And the posters here don't have any reason, beyond normal humanity, to be polite about telling the complainant  that they are wrong and should take responsibility for their own actions.