First, I want to thank your for your comment and info to sent to help out.
eBay has, or should have, some of the best folks in the business and they have Sellers with a huge variety of systems and experience with Computers and Apps. The changes they do should be as seamless as possible and cause as few interface issues as possible, but they don't. They roll out some pretty bad "updates". So much so that I cringe every time I get the message that the next Seller Update is coming. I really cringe at the pending "Managed Payments" program is pending.
Obviously your a more computer savoy guy, then I am. In my twenties, I worked with complex systems such as Hydraulic and High Pressure air control systems and even computers, but they ran on binary or hexadecimal code, loaded by disc packs and mag tape. So my specific knowledge is obsolete.
And even though I have not kept up with changes in technology, some aspects of my training remain true even today. You troubleshoot complex system issues by isolating the changes or actions that resulted in the system failure.
It's true that I've had the same 2 aging Mac Book Pros for about a decade and they have served me well for general use and for managing my 2 eBay stores. They came loaded with Safari and from time to time I do an update download to keep them as current as they can be.
So, when I have a week where several parts of eBay start getting flakey (log in screen, printing shipping labels, not being able to put in a % in Promoted Listings, etc) I have to ask myself "what changed". I'm sitting at the same location, with the same Internet, using the same laptop and software, so why am I having issues today, that I didn't last week.
Regarding eBay, it usually isn't that hard to note that some page layout or Seller Update occurred on the same day the issue arises. If all is fine on Monday, what changed on Tuesday? The answer is almost always that eBay rolled out something new that doesn't work with some of the systems or settings sellers had on Monday.
Most of us know the big issues these past few years:
- When the Hub rolled out it was so unstable for a few weeks the page wouldn't stay loaded without refreshing.
- When Cataloging came out, hundreds of my listing photos were lost or overwritten by stock photos.
- Seller Update Item Specific requirements dropped a huge amount of data off my listings.
But separate from the Big Glitches, it seems that each week users are faced with a constant change to Listing Templates, App Updates, New Features, Layout and Log-in changes and frankly they all come with issues. Keeping up with all the changes is a huge time suck.
It's like the new shipping page format, which they changed 3 or 4 times a few months ago. They had a perfectly good layout that had been around for years. Then made a radical layout change and tried to make it so only the selections chosen for us were visible, rather then all the choices available. I could know, for instance, that I wanted to pick a Med Flat Rate Box, but couldn't get it to appear in the choices offered, without having to manipulate data and hit update. Their update was costing me more time, then the old system.
Anyway, this is getting long. Thanks again.
