I know the story I'm about to tell today about my experience on ebay was most likely widely experienced by sellers around the country. Tell me if it went something like this:
I noticed yesterday our store's first class shipping options for potential USA buyers weren't displaying. I received 3 separate messages from potential buyers asking me why the shipping cost was so high to purchase 1) a t-shirt, 2) a men's tie, and 3) another lightweight shirt. After checking out all my items to see what the heck the deal was, I realized nobody could see our first class shipping option, and it was displaying the next possible shipping option.
So before going any further - those were 3 potential sales that I have confirmed that this problem hemmoraged right out the window. Who knows how many others yesterday and today just simply moved on and didn't even write us to inquire about it.
So that happened, and today I planned on giving ebay a call sometime this afternoon to find out what the deal was or if they were aware of it. Prior to this however, another oddity began taking shape - we had 3 international sales from over the weeked that wanted their items shipped first class, and lo and behold, first class shipping labels wouldn't print. I knew something serious was screwed up.
So fast forward to about an hour ago on the 22nd, tonight. I find out through threads and finally an ebay announcement post that it's a glitch and to bear with it, and they asked sellers to please REFRAIN FROM ALTERING YOUR LISTINGS to adjust to these glitches. This is why I am furious about this (and also, admittedly, kind of relieved).
I personally called ebay on the phone this morning and had a service rep straight up tell me on the phone that this was all USPS's fault, that they were permanently making changes to first class services and that was just how it was going to be. The focus of my anger revolves around this detail however - I specifically asked the man "is this something I should temporarily ignore until the dust settles for a couple days, or should I start now going in an altering my 8,200+ listings to adjust to the changes, because it's about a full day's worth of work realistically to make these changes". I kid you not, he told me straight faced not to wait and to begin altering everything, because it's just the new way they're doing things and that the sooner I get everything adjusted, the better.
So I spent all day until an hour ago getting app. 75% of our store 1) altered so that a lot of our items fit either into the new first class domestic requirements, or abandoning that and setting them to priority mail, and 2) completely removing first class international as an option from all our items altogether. I sincerely thought that the USPS was simply changing and shooting everybody in the foot by pretty much eliminating first class mail, and that my business was just going to have to deal with this and lose out on all the foreign sales from now on.
This is my livelihood, like I'm sure it is for many of you. This gave me about a million heart attacks, caused me to waste a day of work, and now I have to go in and re-fix everything to how it was before. All because (I suspect) that ebay basically makes their reps have a fixed answer to a serious problem they in fact have no idea what's exactly wrong, or where to begin to fix it. Instead of having a rep tell you honestly on the phone that they don't know, they'd rather have them give you a confident but false answer to a serious question, and a false answer that by the way has VERY serious consequences.
Lastly - to address the title of this post - why do we even call them on the phone with issues at all? How am I even supposed to trust the answers they give me at all? If ebay begins to officially bite it in the face of amazon and facebook in the future, how in the hell are we supposed to get honest answers about what's really ever going on? It's obviously very immoral behaviour, but that doesn't really surprise me anymore, I learned years ago that ebay and I were probbaly never going to be friends. But how are we supposed to even get accurate information about anything under these conditions and circumstances?
If any ebay rep or person that checks these message boards would like to address this for me, I'd greatly appreciate it. Although I don't know why I should believe a word you say even if you do.
