How does THIS help sellers SELL ?!? >> Help answer a question from the eBay community

[cynthealee2]

I woke up this afternoon to TWELVE questions about items in my store... guy wants to buy all 6 of the purple variations left up in my store... Wanted to know what my lowest price was with free shipping.

I think WHOO WOOOO SALE!!!!! and I can get rid of 6 more of these figures.

Till I wake up a bit more... and realize I have NO WAY, none what so ever of talking to THAT buyer.

The stupid email I got was sent to EVERY seller of THAT particular item because of the "ask question" on the PRODUCT page. The email does NOT contain the buyers name anywhere so I can sent a message through eBay's system, and I'm quite sure that my ANSWER to his questions are going to go into the clouds as well. (ROFL bet half those sellers are trying to figure out what "purple" the buyer was talking about. )

ALLLLLLLL because eBay thought it was a BRILLIANT idea to put a Q and A on the PRODUCT page and NOT telling the buyers what it was for, how it worked, or that their questions would not go to an INDIVIDUAL seller that could actually work with them to buy the items they are looking for.

Those questions the buyers ask go into the clouds (cause I can't find where they post either on the product page OR in the Q&A section of community), the answers I send back on them go into the clouds cause they never get "approved" and posted on the product page (or in the boards).

What was the POINT eBay????? to tick off the buyers AND the sellers all in one go?

Cause I know that buyer is ticked I have ignored his TWELVE questions sent to me discussing the various figures and the purple variations over a 3 hour time span.

Last Email from the "buyer":

An eBay member has a question for you.

A buyer is interested in the product you’re selling but they have a question. Can you help them out?

The question:

“Hi checked out your store you have 6 different purple variants 2 anakins # 2 & # 28, agen kolar # 20, bail organa # 15, Chewbacca # 5, chancellor palpatine # 14 what price can you give if I buy all 6 purples with free shipping.?”

Without a NAME of the buyer or a way to contact the individual seller from the product page what in hades was the point in putting the Q & A on the PRODUCT page!!!!!

Do I need to put a blurb in bright red at the top of my listings "Do NOT try and contact the seller from the product page, we will not be able to respond to you, please contact me through eBay messages instead".

PS you guys can @ who ever you want to or THINK is at least going to listen. I'll start the ball rolling

@syedmhaq

[gramophone-georg]

This is just nuts. NUTS.

It's like the poster child / microcosm for everything that is wrong with eBay:

It's. Too. Complicated.

Could you just IMAGINE Amazon "working" like this? I mean, seriously.  eBay has teams out there in space developing this sort of nutty stuff and nobody knows who they are or why they're doing it.  Every. Single. Change. eBay makes adds layers, clicks, and steps. In the age of 'one click buying', eBay can't even make asking a seller a question intuitive and user friendly.

And eBay is wondering WHY they are losing relevance? It's because you're throwing intuitiveness, common sense, and the whole concept of "user friendly" off a cliff into the Grand Canyon on a daily basis. It's insane!

Just get back to basics and make a search that's keyword based, not some unqualified idiot's idea of fantasy- relevance  based.

Make it easy to find, buy, pay, and get on with life.

Stop spamming buyer's inboxes with your happy happy joy joy trite garbage every time we make a move on here. It's annoying and downright makes buyers feel stalked and angry. Amazon doesn't do this. Stop it. Just stop it.

If a buyer wants to communicate with a seller and ask them a question- let them. Instead of doing that, though, you either insult buyers by accusing them of wanting to buy off eBay because of some stupid word or number- like an eBay item number- that your dotard bots 'decide' means there is gonna be a policy violation, or our question gets thrown out into cyberspace on some long strange trip because you can't make your idiotic site navigable.

I'm sorry for the rant but you eBay people NEED TO GET A HANDLE ON THIS STUFF and stop with the arrogant incompetence. Start listening to your users and start hearing what THEY want, and not just what you want to hear. Otherwise, feel free to enjoy articles like the one that got released today about how you've lost your way to remaining relevant.

[cynthealee2]

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@cynthealee2 wrote:

@syedmhaq

Did you figure out what is going on and if this mess is permanent?

Cause as you saw with the screen shots I sent you, nothing goes through back to the buyer if the question is not about the item itself.   If the question is about making a deal with multiple items, or about shipping rates both the question and the answer go out into the netherland.

I've completely stopped working on the excel file for the catalog, and editing of listings... cause if this is the new normal then I have to redo more than I thought and I'm NOT redoing these more than once on Auctiva.

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@syedmhaq

Still waiting... All editing, catalog fixing and everything else has completely stopped till some one figures this out.

[syedmhaq]

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@cynthealee2 wrote:

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@cynthealee2 wrote:

@syedmhaq

Did you figure out what is going on and if this mess is permanent?

Cause as you saw with the screen shots I sent you, nothing goes through back to the buyer if the question is not about the item itself.   If the question is about making a deal with multiple items, or about shipping rates both the question and the answer go out into the netherland.

I've completely stopped working on the excel file for the catalog, and editing of listings... cause if this is the new normal then I have to redo more than I thought and I'm NOT redoing these more than once on Auctiva.

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@syedmhaq

Still waiting... All editing, catalog fixing and everything else has completely stopped till some one figures this out.

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@cynthealee2 I've had detailed discussions with the product manager for the "Questions & Answers" feature. I've shared all the issues you've encountered and I've personally observed as well:

1. Context of the Q&A Module:
   When the user is on a specific listing page, we shouldn't be asking them to post general questions about the product instead of that particular listing. 
2. Communication:
   The fact that sellers are getting questions with no information on who asked the question, is a big problem. We need to foster open communication between the community and not have messages go into the proverbial black hole.

It may take some time for the feature owner to re-evaluate and update the experience to address these issues.

[dtexley3]

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@syedmhaq wrote:

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@cynthealee2 I've had detailed discussions with the product manager for the "Questions & Answers" feature. I've shared all the issues you've encountered and I've personally observed as well:

1. Context of the Q&A Module:
   When the user is on a specific listing page, we shouldn't be asking them to post general questions about the product instead of that particular listing. 
2. Communication:
   The fact that sellers are getting questions with no information on who asked the question, is a big problem. We need to foster open communication between the community and not have messages go into the proverbial black hole.

It may take some time for the feature owner to re-evaluate and update the experience to address these issues.

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@syedmhaq  It's the Christmas selling season.  YOU DON'T HAVE THE TIME to re-evalate.  Roll back this bad code until AFTER it's been fixed.  People pointed out this was going to be an issue and here it is.  Roll the code back.  This is causing buyers to have bad experiences, sellers to lose sales and eBay to lose fees.  Roll the code back.  

There comes a time to realize that the implmentation is flawed/incomplete and is doing more damage than good.  Roll the code back.

I'm not trying to be the grumpy old man with this, but please consider putting product pages on hold and rolling the code back on how buyer to seller contacts are handled.

[ittybitnot]

We need to foster open communication between the community and not have messages go into the proverbial black hole.

Indeed.  As a seller and ebay user since 1998 I think that perhaps your bot programs are crossed, blowing up, and leaving us  sellers looking like some sort of below board criminals.  We are indeed tired of it.  Communications are now DISCORUAGED, and many of us get nastygrams from the venue.  

Nobody is "fostering open communication" on ebay anymore.  Sorry you missed the memo.  I have always appreciated your posts and inquires.  Somebody is leaving you out of the loop.  

[labs118]

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@syedmhaq wrote:

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@cynthealee2 wrote:

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@cynthealee2 wrote:

@syedmhaq

Did you figure out what is going on and if this mess is permanent?

Cause as you saw with the screen shots I sent you, nothing goes through back to the buyer if the question is not about the item itself.   If the question is about making a deal with multiple items, or about shipping rates both the question and the answer go out into the netherland.

I've completely stopped working on the excel file for the catalog, and editing of listings... cause if this is the new normal then I have to redo more than I thought and I'm NOT redoing these more than once on Auctiva.

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@syedmhaq

Still waiting... All editing, catalog fixing and everything else has completely stopped till some one figures this out.

---

@cynthealee2 I've had detailed discussions with the product manager for the "Questions & Answers" feature. I've shared all the issues you've encountered and I've personally observed as well:

1. Context of the Q&A Module:
   When the user is on a specific listing page, we shouldn't be asking them to post general questions about the product instead of that particular listing. 
2. Communication:
   The fact that sellers are getting questions with no information on who asked the question, is a big problem. We need to foster open communication between the community and not have messages go into the proverbial black hole.

It may take some time for the feature owner to re-evaluate and update the experience to address these issues.

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@syedmhaq
Isn't it a Priority ?
Take some time as we enter the busy holiday season!
 
How many upset buyers and how many lost sales for sellers like OP because of this ?

Can we get more solid information . 

[penguins_dont_fly]

[[It may take some time for the feature owner to re-evaluate and update the experience to address these issues.]]

I just want to interject something here ...

I have never in my life dealt with a software development department where a feature team worked in a vacuum ... And where the testing cycle did not include integration testing by ALL of the stakeholders.

All new features should be signed off on the highest level, after testing integration with the whole suite ... the "feature owner" should not have the authority to push code into the live environment 😞

Features do not exist as a standalone product. Integration with the whole is paramount to a successful release.

And Beta Testing is not done in the Live  environment 😞 😞

[lookng2015]

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@penguins_dont_fly wrote:

And Beta Testing is not done in the Live  environment 😞 😞

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How long have you been on eBay? = )

[cynthealee2]

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@lookng2015 wrote:

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@penguins_dont_fly wrote:

And Beta Testing is not done in the Live  environment 😞 😞

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How long have you been on eBay? = )

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*Snort*  *spit*... dang it now you own me a keyboard, 😉  warn a person before you deliver those pithy comments.

[lookng2015]

[penguins_dont_fly]

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@cynthealee2 wrote:

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@lookng2015 wrote:

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@penguins_dont_fly wrote:

And Beta Testing is not done in the Live  environment 😞 😞

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How long have you been on eBay? = )

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*Snort*  *spit*... dang it now you own me a keyboard, 😉  warn a person before you deliver those pithy comments.

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@lookng2015

Long enough to know better LOL

*Sigh* Having worked for a real "Technology" company for a long time, I just don't understand the cavalier way that eBay rolls things out. My company sandboxed and mirror tested everything, including outside "productivity" suites, to make sure that they were compatible and that one fix didn't break something else.

I have beta tested and "Break" tested hundreds of features, enhancements and "from scratch" code. I have worked with software developers and hardware departments ... none of those folks would even think of just pushing something live that was my tested and approved by the stakeholders and end-users.

But what do I know? Maybe it's just the way things are done nowadays ??

@cynthealee2 Sorry about the keyboard and monitor ... entirely my fault ... I knew that statement would elicit that reaction from somebody 🙂   If not lookng, it would have been Dave or, southern, or ... well ... everybody else LOL

[lookng2015]

I've been a Beta tester too (mainly accounting software) and well recall the times I wandered next door to programming to say "when I do this it does that", only to be told "well don't DO 'that'" LOL

The best was when I accidentally keyed through a backdoor and the coders had a purple fit.

[penguins_dont_fly]

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@lookng2015 wrote:
I've been a Beta tester too (mainly accounting software) and well recall the times I wandered next door to programming to say "when I do this it does that", only to be told "well don't DO 'that'" LOL

The best was when I accidentally keyed through a backdoor and the coders had a purple fit.

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HA! 

"Am I supposed to be able to call and edit the Quarterly Financial Statements through the 'Reports' tool? I wasn't aware that I had that level of permissions, even in Beta"

"NO!!! ... Err...please show us what you are talking about?"

[lookng2015]

Or when an invoice or purchase order would auto populate from the document before it? LOL

[cynthealee2]

LOL this is why I married the techie, and tried my best to raise at least 2 of the 5 to be programers.

So all I'd have to do was go "I broke it, fix it"... it works till I get into some programming stuff and then hubby goes "don't look at me, ask ______ (oldest child)"

Every now and then both of em look at me and go... "yep, you broke it, and there is no fixing it... reboot and start over"....

LOL don't ask WHAT I broke or HOW I broke it... just know that hubby has put permanant back up thingies on my comps so that when I 'break' w/e they can do 'restore' and bring it back to before I 'broke' it... Hubby and the kids gave up asking HOW I did it years ago.... cause what I tell em and what ends up wrong with it are never the same thing... go figure.

Most famous is I tended (in the earlier days) to wipe out entire hard drives and operating systems.

Dingbats should have never EVER showed me DOS, and ' del*.* ' to make space on my comps. 😉  ROFL all I wanted was that game to fit, so I could play it 😄