fairplaythings.com

I’ve been a member of eBay since December 11, 1997. I haven’t always been happy with the company in the 13+ years since then - the escalating listing prices, the co-mingling of eBay with PayPal (and subsequent cash grabs), the functionality - but I’ve stayed loyal because they are the biggest game in town. And I find good stuff on eBay, items I would not find elsewhere. And I am a good customer - 100% positive results, long time member, and one who both buys and sells.

But I have never endured the level of frustration like I’ve endured tonight.

You see, for about the last week or so, I’ve been unable to pay for items won directly through eBay. It’s a mystery why. I can bid on the item, win the item, and receive an invoice from the seller. But when I click on the little “pay now” icon, in either the invoice or on eBay itself, I get an error message and politely told to try back in a few minutes. This has happened pretty much every day for the last week.

So I tried to do what most people do. Find a way to contact eBay by email to alert them of the problem and find out when and how they intend to fix it. However, this is not the eBay of old. The customer support function takes you through a standard Frequently Asked Question. Anything more technical, they have no answer. And, most helpful of all, they have seemingly done away with any electronic contact point with a service representative. One’s options are an automated help desk (which is not very helpful) and a telephone number.

The telephone number is not toll free.

Now to this point, I have been basically taking matters into my own hands. Assuming a momentary glitch that has to clear up at some point, I have been tracking down the contact information of the sellers and emailing them, through eBay, asking them to send me an invoice directly through PayPal. (PayPal I must add manages to work just fine through all this, and, even though they are the same company, I believe they still have an electronic contact information point.) Because there are time limits involved. But this is not a simple thing, because eBay locks down its information (on the surface to ensure the privacy of its clients, but in reality I believe to prevent under-the-table trades for which they can’t claim their insertion fee and whatever percentage they charge on the value of the sale). When you click on the seller’s name and select the contact function, you are taken to a list of not-helpful questions and a promise that eBay will follow-up. There is no contact point available through the auction page in question.

Basically you have to trick eBay into allowing you to contact the seller. I’ve been doing this by clicking on their numeric rating system, and selecting contact under the quick list function. At the next screen, I’ve been clicking the box that says “this is not about an item” (because if I say it is about an item, eBay automated takes over, and I am returned to the not-helpful question page.

So while I can facilitate the exchange it takes some ingenuity. And it takes time. Because I have to wait for (and hope that) the seller will grant my request and send a PayPal invoice. So I’m basically looking at a day’s wait for what should be a five minute exercise, one for which eBay is charging the seller to accomplish!

So tonight, it was after 6:00 and I decided to call eBay so that my account could go back to working the way it was intended to work. And thus came the frustration.

After sitting on hold for 12 minutes (on my dime, I remind you), I got a representative on the phone. I explained the problem. Yes, I’ve bought and won the items, I tell him. Yes this has been going on for a number of days. And it would be a lot easier on everyone if eBay just let me send them an email. (Since they seem to have no trouble contact me for every sale or event they have, I know they are capable of electronic communication.) After the rep “gets the problem” and having returned from leaving me on hold, he informs me that the problem has been flagged before. Apparently it was flagged as “fixed” on February 11 (truth be told this is probably when the problem actually started for me). He told me they would flag it again to examine the issue and, in the meantime, I could contact sellers directly for an invoice.

And this is the point where things went south.

I asked how long before the situation was resolved. He assured me 48 - 72 hours. I then asked for an email contact point through which I could continue to follow-up, because I had no intention of running up more long distance charges if things did not get finished. HE COULD NOT GIVE ME SUCH INFORMATION. Worse than that, he actually TRIED to give me such information, beginning to walk me through the customer support function, only to find that it was a dead end, and promptly stopped.

Okay I said, why don’t you send me an email through eBay and we can communicate that way. “I can’t do that,” he said. I think at this point is where I lost my already fragile cool. The following was said in no particular order:

• eBay is a multi-billion dollar business (value: approximately US$40 billion)
• you have a major glitch in your system and have not been able to fix it
• you have no way for me to contact you directly by email (although you once did) and, seemingly, no way to contact me through email (though, as noted, they do and are just not willing to use that function)
• I should contact the sellers directly to make alternate arrangements, despite the difficulty this imposes and the fact that this is a service for which the seller is paying money to you to undertake

There were two other points that came out of this conversation. The first was his belief that it was EASY (to say nothing of proper) for me to contact the seller directly to make alternate arrangements. The analogy I used on the phone is that it is like walking into a store and being told I cannot pay with credit card because there is not a machine in the store. Yes, the item can be purchased, but it requires finding cash or walking across the street in the hopes of finding a bank machine. It may not be easy and it is certainly not convenient.

The second was his complete unwillingness to let me speak to a manager. “Why do you want to speak to a manager,” he asked. Are you freakin’ kidding me? My response was literally “I don’t need a reason,” which is true. I have gotten nowhere with you, and I have asked for your supervisor. And still he refused.

So where am I, beside profanity-ridden exchanges halfway across the continent and threats of leaving eBay and telling my friends to do the same? Not very far, really. I have no assurance my account will ever work. I have no way to follow-up other than to call back (at my expense). I’ve probably been red flagged for calling in the first place at this point. But I have the Internet. And I can tell my story. On Facebook and blogs and websites. And hopefully on their customer feedback site.

Because it really isn’t too much to ask for a simple email address and one’s account to work properly. It’s what I am paying for after all.