Wednesday, April 27, 2005
eBay - not so usable
I've bought and sold a couple of things on eBay, and I've always found the process to be relatively straightfoward. But as is usually the case with these things, I had to wait until things went wrong before finding the chinks in eBay's apparent user friendliness.
I sold a guitar for a family member, which went fine until the buyer actually received it, and declared that it was not in the 'excellent condition' we'd described it as. I know very little about guitars, so didn't waste any time arguing about it, and offered the guy a refund if he paid to return it. That's where things started getting a bit less than usable. Firstly, I found that I couldn't immediately offer a refund, because the funds had to come directly from my PayPal account, not from my bank account. Why? PayPayl offer direct account-account payments under other circumstances. Then I needed to go through the official procedure with eBay, so that I got my fees refunded (eBay charge a percentage of the final sale value). To do that I had to file an 'Unpaid Item report'. This doesn't make any sense. This wasn't an unpaid item, it's a returned and refunded item. Yep, you get to specify that later on, but still I think eBay should provide a streamlined 'return & refund' option. Worryingly, this mechanism didn't seem to work very well at all. I file a report, eBay email the buyer to confirm what I've said, he clicks a button and it should all wrap up. But we ended up with the eBay system getting confused about the actual state of this dispute, and I was getting worried about being able to claim back my fees. An email to eBay's help team produced first of all just a cut & paste of the help pages, and then a suggestion that the buyer try his button again. It didn't work. I persuaded eBay to step-in and over-ride this faulty mechanism, so now my account is in credit, and I can get my fees back. Or can I? the help pages say there is a link to request a refund when your account is in credit, but that link must be invisible. Another email gets a response telling me they've forwarded my request to the accounts dept, and I should get a refund, but it might take 60 days! overall, I'm not impressed with eBay right now, mainly because they are big differences between what their help pages say and what actually goes on, and also because their first response to a plea for help is usually a copy of the help page the meant you had to ask for help in the first place!
I've bought and sold a couple of things on eBay, and I've always found the process to be relatively straightfoward. But as is usually the case with these things, I had to wait until things went wrong before finding the chinks in eBay's apparent user friendliness.
I sold a guitar for a family member, which went fine until the buyer actually received it, and declared that it was not in the 'excellent condition' we'd described it as. I know very little about guitars, so didn't waste any time arguing about it, and offered the guy a refund if he paid to return it. That's where things started getting a bit less than usable. Firstly, I found that I couldn't immediately offer a refund, because the funds had to come directly from my PayPal account, not from my bank account. Why? PayPayl offer direct account-account payments under other circumstances. Then I needed to go through the official procedure with eBay, so that I got my fees refunded (eBay charge a percentage of the final sale value). To do that I had to file an 'Unpaid Item report'. This doesn't make any sense. This wasn't an unpaid item, it's a returned and refunded item. Yep, you get to specify that later on, but still I think eBay should provide a streamlined 'return & refund' option. Worryingly, this mechanism didn't seem to work very well at all. I file a report, eBay email the buyer to confirm what I've said, he clicks a button and it should all wrap up. But we ended up with the eBay system getting confused about the actual state of this dispute, and I was getting worried about being able to claim back my fees. An email to eBay's help team produced first of all just a cut & paste of the help pages, and then a suggestion that the buyer try his button again. It didn't work. I persuaded eBay to step-in and over-ride this faulty mechanism, so now my account is in credit, and I can get my fees back. Or can I? the help pages say there is a link to request a refund when your account is in credit, but that link must be invisible. Another email gets a response telling me they've forwarded my request to the accounts dept, and I should get a refund, but it might take 60 days! overall, I'm not impressed with eBay right now, mainly because they are big differences between what their help pages say and what actually goes on, and also because their first response to a plea for help is usually a copy of the help page the meant you had to ask for help in the first place!
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(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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