@metaltech1 wrote:
Look at it this way......
If it were an easy answer/fix to a question, it would not be asked or answered again if people searched and read about the answer/fix and followed the instruction. But, this is the "New eBay" we are talking about.
Glitches, broken/not functioning links, payment holds, format changes and the like can't be fix in community chat. Ebay customer service would reply "Thanks for the information! We are working on it!" if you could get a hold of them.
I use the community chat to see if the myriad of problems, past...present...and future, are being addressed and resolved so I can resume selling again. I scan the "selling", "payments" and "technical problems" categories to do that. And, the outlook is not good......
As someone who has encountered many technical problems, I have to be honest, there's a major problem of how eBay handles things in the community here.
If you report it over the phone, you only get a CS agent at the lowest level. They have taken more and more of the abilities the CS agents have to fix things over the years, and the CS agent's are even limited in how much of your account they can see nowadays. The best they can do is send a case to the tech team.
See, one of the things they do, is guiding you to the community here for further assistance. Especially on tech issues, because they will openly admit that tech issues are handled based on how many people report the issue. So it's actually advised to come to the community to see if others are facing the issue.
Here's where things get strange. You report issues here, and even if someone in the thread calls out a mod, there's not often an answer. And if there is an answer, it's clearly PR, and *not* support. What I mean by this, is they will focus on optics, try to say something along the lines of needing to "check" or "confirm" if there is an issue.
Now, eBay has the capabilities of taking your report and saying "We do see there's a problem, we're going to get this escalated and looked at as soon as possible!" And to be fair, that does happen on rare occasions. But more often than not, you'll never hear anything again.
This leads to a lot of turmoil on here. Some people will question if the problem is happening, some will cast doubt. EBay could alleviate this situation by simply admitting to the problem. But since the focus is on PR and optics, this doesn't happen.
There's also moving goal posts on here. You could speak to person after person confirming the issue, and then once you bring it to the forum, if at all possible they will try to keep it quiet.
Some examples:
- For 6+ months we had issues where the VeRO team was telling us that "Fair Warnings" without a listing takedown do NOT have any penalty. It's literally in the name - fair warning. I questioned on here, didn't get an answer. The Sellers Health team confirmed with a one-pager business readout that we did indeed have a penalty on our account from this "fair warning". The VeRO team directly stated this shouldn't happen and is a tech issue. After 6 months, one of the mods here claims it's "normal" and you "can" have action taken against you! The VeRO team themselves told us this is not supposed to be the case. Rather than fixing the issue, they change the policies to where a "fair warning" is not a warning, nor is it fair, at all!
- I've reported major issues where we had huge drops in impressions, the Sellers Health department confirmed that the graphs for our store had discrepancies and weren't matching each other. And the supervisor of MSO claimed that there was a "risk level" on our account - which seems to confirm the jaknox limit post from years back that eBay claimed was not true. When questioned about this, Trinton had said he would look in to it and get back to us as soon as he has an answer. Oddly, just a few hours later he posts that he's leaving for vacation for the summer? Which makes it weird to say he would get back to us if he was leaving in just a couple hours. He says he passed it off to someone else who didn't respond. Then a long time later, rather than answer the questions that were asked, the mod just replies saying we're "now being treated properly". Which is bittersweet, as at least they're admitting we were mistreated, but they never answered the questions that were asked!
- I had mentioned the jaknox situation. You can view the post here - https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archive-Selling/Selling-Standards/m-p/23358986#M728102 - which seemingly confirms the limits eBay puts on sellers. This has always been a hotly debated subject, with some saying the limits don't exist and there's no reason for eBay to limit anyone, and there's those of us who have been told directly that limits do exist (and we've encountered them before). After that post was made, they deleted it, then claimed it was a "mistake" and restored it. But then they said it wasn't true, but even in their defense of it, it was contradictory and didn't make sense. They could easily set the record straight and tell the truth. We see this topic come up on eBay all the time. But they will stay silent on the issue, they'll let posters fight each other tooth and nail about if these things are true or not. But they will not state the truth.
These are just a few examples off the top of my head. But it makes it clear that eBay's posting strategy is built around optics and PR. Posts of legit issues will be moved to "special interest" forums with literally no traffic. Glitches that have been in eBay's systems for years will not get any response. And it literally breeds an environment where people feel like it's "pro eBay" vs "anti eBay". When in reality, criticism or admitting issues you face daily should not make you "anti eBay" and supporting eBay shouldn't make you "pro eBay". The environment only serves to bring legitimate issues in to question, and for readers to not know what to believe.
Now I will give credit where credit is due. They do come through on the forums sometimes. Last year with the issues with USPS, they did come through and protect those of us in the forum posts. And that's very appreciated.
I just wish that the same amount of transparency and honesty was "the norm" around here. It's extremely discouraging when they refuse to confirm something that would lead to poor optics and let people argue about if the problem is real or not, when they know for a fact it was real. It would make the optics far better if they simply said "We see the problem and we're working on a fix!" Should that really be so difficult? Why should us sellers have to convince our fellow sellers that these problems exist or else the problem will never be fixed, rather than eBay simply confirming it?
