Regards,
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@mr_lincoln wrote:@valueaddedresource , @my-cottage-books-and-antiques , @dhbookds , @wastingtime101 , @12345jamesstamps
I suspect that there might be some internal reorganizing and restructuring with regard to the eBay Support Team for The Community pursuant to the group that has been let go from the company.
February may wind up being a wash for some things ... we're still waiting for confirmation on the February Mentors meeting. It may wind up getting pushed to March, who knows.
@mr_lincoln I totally get that but to my knowledge, the main community staff were not impacted by the layoffs and are still part of the community team.
While it's completely understandable that reorganizing and restructuring may be causing internal disruption, which could be limiting access to people on other teams to show up for specific chats or ability to get answers from those teams etc., I don't see any reason that any of them who have been logged in and/or actively posting in other threads in the last 24 hours couldn't at least put up a post in the chat section saying sorry for the short notice, no chat this week, we're rescheduling for next week or just skipping this month and will be back in March or we'll provide more details later or...something.
Same with the mentors meeting. I think the vast majority of us would be very understanding of things being postponed or delayed if there was just some basic communication about what is going on.
No disagreement here. But within each organization it usually comes down to one person who has final say on the "when" something might happen in their area of responsibility. And yes, most of the eBay "Team" is still active but the Manager of that Team may not be OR they may be in the process of selecting a new Manager for the group. The "Team" members may be keeping a low profile waiting to see what shakes out OR the Team is in the process of being restructured and reorganized so that when they finally do re-engage it is with a specific support structure with defined responsibilities.
I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and doing the wait and see thing. Nothing we can do about whatever decisions are made.
Who knows, they may also be taking a hard look at how relevant some of the regular meetings are here on The Community. Monthly Chat, monthly Mentors meeting, the Mentor program, etc.
I stopped using the Chat for a number of reasons ... the biggest one was that most things I presented were passed on to the Team that handles that and in most cases nothing would happen, other than a follow up status request followed by circling back if there was any news ... which rarely happened.
With the loss of 1000 employees I suspect that the process will not improve in that regard, just different people to pass things on to and possibly different people to do the circling around and back function.
There was a time when I was hopeful that Members here, primarily Sellers, would morph into a group of Influencers able to affect policy and other programs. I think many of us are just part of a loosely knit Focus group acting as a sounding board for certain topics.
In any event, change is in progress so we will have to wait and see what happens.
@a_c_green wrote:
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:As you say, there are all these little, easy things ebay could do to improve seller trust and enhance dialogue, but this company seems determined to do the opposite.
I've noticed that for some time. This company demonstrates an aggressive stranglehold on communication between employees and users (and even employees with other employees) that I have not seen anywhere else. The simplest questions go unanswered; releases are dumped into Production with no announcement or even in-house training (e.g. for Customer Service or community reps, who are often as baffled as everyone else); problem reports go unacknowledged (notice how few topics in the "Report eBay Technical Issues" group show the little logo of an eBay reply). Even the Community contacts here who forward user issues to the various "teams" get stonewalled when it comes to followup or resolution.
I just posted right up thread about some of this ... I have begun to question the relevance of members here as it relates to what eBay is going to decide to do regardless of our input.
@zamo-zuan wrote:
"Is anyone even in charge or "managing" this place anymore? Rather than a focus group, it's felt more like a support group meeting with how we gotta look out for each other. Dealing with issues on eBay is like being in a toxic relationship, where you get gaslighted and then dealt the silent treatment.
With how obsessed eBay is with 'tech-led reimagination' it's only a matter of time until speaking to an AI is the best they will be able to do. At least an AI will have an excuse for not being able to speak about certain subjects and won't have to resort to ghosting you."
@zamo-zuan Well, consider the dynamics leading up to a mass release of 1000 employees. I am sure within eBay THEY knew it was coming long before we did and I am sure many were scrambling trying to figure out if they were going to get the axe or not. Having to change jobs is no fun.
AI may have actually contributed to letting some of that 1000 go ... we don't know that but I've learned that in this day and age nothing is off the table ...
I think with the advent of other avenues to interact with eBay, like Facebook and others, The Community involvement has shrunk. While I haven't taken down a count of names (IDs to be more specific) that post most often here the number of actively engaged members is small in comparison to the total eBay account membership of Sellers and Buyers. So I think by shear numbers the opportunity to influence policy is slim.
