Draconian new 'no contact info' implementation is errant -- BUG!

[mjmcginty]

I was trying to communicate with a seller, providing the original part number for the carburetor for my riding mower.  It looks somewhat like a phone number (maybe in some third-world country) but the fact of the matter is, IT ISN'T A **bleep** PHONE NUMBER, not in my country and doubtfully in the seller's either.

So in your paranoia to programmatically police those nasty scoflaws who might be so evil as to transact business off-ebay [gasp] YOU HAVE BROKEN A FUNDAMENTAL FACILITY that is necessary to efficiently doing business!

If you care about the workability of this site, you must tone it down some, you should ONLY block strings that match a phone number in one or both party's locale.  And you need an easy way to appeal these ridiculous blocks, otherwise these measures impede sales, plain and simple.

(I understand this is not ebay tech support, but they make it impossible to reach them on any but a very narrow band of topics, none of which pertain to usability or user dissatisfaction.  Now onto the survey -- this is going to be fun!)

[newjerseypicker08836]

Great if you sell stuff local! So a prospective buyer wants to come check out an item like a car or power equipment before he commits to purchase. But now you cant give him any contact info. You actually have to call ebay, tell a Customer Care representative to give this person your information, yada, yada, yada, to be approved. It does not get much better than that Einstein move!

You have to just say sorry. I cant tell you my address because the ebay system will flag me for trying to sell off of ebay. And by the way, I am a moron. Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day! Here is your ebay listing fee Sir Ebay!

[mjmcginty]

They have actual people that answer phones?  Wow, the lengths they have gone to confine us within their automated 'solutions' made me wonder if it was still even possible to get human attention from them.  Which "support option" coughs up their phone number?  (Or does that get censored too.)

[newjerseypicker08836]

I just use the Ebay Customer Service number that comes up on Google.

[mjmcginty]

Good thinking!  I use google similarly to find things in MSDN (because its native bing-based search is worthless) not sure why I didn't think of that.

Doesn't it seem conspicuous/odd/almost nefarious that eBay offers absolutely no mechanism to report flaws/bugs in their site and apparent algorithms?  Could the message "we don't f*cking care what you think" be any louder?

[mjmcginty]

In practice the survey was of limited fun, it did end with an essay question, so gave the satisfaction of getting it off my chest...  Of course, chances it will actually be read are decidedly quite poor, but who knows?  Maybe some intern will misinterpret the "we could give a rat's ass" directive and accidentally do something with my words.  (Child-like optimism, I know.)