One thing’s for sure. eBay’s customer services are absolutely dire, as demonstrated by the run-around I got recently while trying to get a simple answer to a simple question.
A couple of months back, I sold two DVDs in auctions that ended on the same day and were won by the same buyer, a first-time occurrence for me, who was new to selling. I clicked the ‘send invoice’ buttons on the emails eBay sent to confirm the sales, and waited for the money to roll in.
The person who bought the two DVDs paid almost immediately, but paid for them together with only one lot of postage. As I hadn’t offered a discount I thought this was a little cheeky, and sent him a message politely asking for the remainder. He replied, “Sorry but under your final invoice, the P+P was £2. Under eBay policy, you cannot increase the postage after payment has been made.” Interesting. I checked the emails which produced the invoices, and one of them did indeed combine the postage costs, something I definitely didn’t agree to do in the listings. Had the buyer ignored my eBay-produced invoices and sent an email of his own asking for a cheaper one? If so, it seemed very underhand. Time to check with eBay…
The first reply I got was an automated response offering answers to common situations, inviting me to send the question again if it didn’t solve the problem. It didn’t, so I did. I got a second reply agreeably quickly (same day, in fact), but the response was basically another form letter in which eBay washed their hands of the problem. ‘Situations such as these are considered by eBay as a member-to-member conflict, which users should resolve between themselves … we can't get involved directly in disputes between trading partners.’ Pretty shabby considering I hadn’t even asked them to get involved. I’d simply explained the situation and asked whether I had to accept the reduced postage fees under eBay’s rules.
I hit the ‘reply’ button once more, and repeated my request for a clarification of the rules. Again, I got a fast reply which was of no use whatsoever, being a lazy cut-and-paste from the user agreement. It was from a completely different person too – so much for taking ownership of the problem. I tried a third time, pleading for ‘a simple answer to a simple question’, and got another fast reply from another customer services representative. And again, it completely ignored my question, informing me that it’s my job to state clearly in my listing what postage I expected. Gnnnn – if she’d read my email properly, she’d know I’d done exactly that!
Thankfully, as well as talking to eBay, I’d also raised the point on an independent internet forum (not this one), and the users there were far more helpful than eBay’s own customer service monkeys. It transpired the invoice combining the postal costs was sent automatically by eBay because although I didn’t offer to do this in the listings, there is a postage preference on sellers’ accounts that’s set to ‘combine postage’ by default. I wasn’t aware of this – I didn’t even know this preference existed. As the buyer was entirely innocent, I immediately posted the DVDs under the payment he had already made, and bemoaned the fact that three of eBay’s customer service employees managed to miss what should’ve been obvious.
