Our company has been selling on ebay for some time now. Most of the issues that have arisen due to ebays primitive code/site have not affected our employees ability to efficiently post and thus have not affected us too much in a negative way. That was then, this is now.
Ebay has now been implementing small, yet completely useless changes to their app. The changes are:
- now automatically put the listing title within the body - no option to disable this
- shipping is automatically set to USPS - no option to set your preferred shipping method
additionally, it seems they're constantly adjusting the app for no apparent reason. It's like a bi-weekly thing where they'll change it up just after you've gotten accustomed to their last update.
Anyways, the most frustrating part of my ebay comes to this issue: Automatically changes paypal addresses to no known address on file and or completely removes your address so you have to take the time to enter it in again. This issue has caused us negative feedback as well as over a thousand dollars in lost time and items sold.
I know what most of you will say - just make sure to check the address before submitting the listing.... But this is a defeatist perspective as as a seller who pays a large portion to ebay in fees it should not be my job or my employees to take the time out of their work day to enter in information that should be fixed as our paypal address DOES NOT CHANGE.
ebay, why do you use a paypal address that does not exist anywhere on our store or personal information section? Why do you change our paypal address to nothing and then make us re-enter it? Why do you change our return policy on some items, but not others? Why do you change our handling time on some items but not others?
We've called ebay and the thick indian accented ladies blame us for their primitive and glitchy site. Moreover, they refused to remove the subsequent negative feedback that we received due to this issue.
As a laymen in website design, the functionality seems clear to me: Allow the seller to create a customized template with all the sellers personal preferences, i. e : preferred shipping method, pay pal address,shipping time, return policy etc. After you've saved that template all you've got to do to list an item is chose that specific template, upload pictures and edit the body - done! The goal is seamless customization for the seller that allows one to efficiently post without hiccups
ebay gives the illusion of this kind of design but clearly it does not exist since we're constantly having to re-edit the listings for our preferred shipping methods, paypal address, return policy etc.
We'll continue to use ebay as there isn't another website that provides access to the large customer base for our particular market but man, if there was I would certainly make the switch.
