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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: August 30, 2002 WebWord Comment -- I just wanted everyone to know that I have repeatedly tried to get in touch with someone from eBay. However, I have been entirely unsuccessful in my efforts. I have submitted at least three emails and I have called both eBay and Half.com several times. The emails have done me absolutely no good. They have gone into the void, lost forever. In my first phone call the customer service representative insisted on sending me to eBay's contact page, which is just a form. I did not get a response from eBay using this form. In another call to Half.com, the customer service representative refused to put me in touch with an account executive (e.g., sales guy) despite the fact that I stated I was interested in potentially listing hundreds of thousands of dollars of captial goods on eBay. (I'm not kidding.) Instead, after waiting for several minutes on hold, she asked for my name, phone number, and company. I supplied that information to her and my email address too. She then told me that someone would be in touch with me later that day. That was Wednesday, today is Friday. No response yet, and I don't expect one. In my mind it is insane that it is so hard to reach people within eBay. It took me about an hour just to find real eBay phone numbers. I have found that it is impossible to find direct phone numbers and email addresses on the eBay web site. The only "real" contact page for eBay that I can find is here. Isn't it funny that a company that rules the online world forces users to contact them using postal mail? In summary, getting in touch with eBay is impossible. That is sad because I have a real business problem that I thought eBay could help me solve.
Reader Comments...
Your KORN CD collection doesn't count as capital goods, John. Anyhow... that's one thing I stress in my job, swift response to e-mail. In this sad world it's an easy way to impress people. Hey, you know what, I think I'll make low bids on weird things just so that when snoopy people look up my bidding history, their brains will melt. Posted by: Jack on August 30, 2002 04:01 PM
Sometimes people share the same user id. That brings up several usability problems. For example, Amazon is always trying to get me to buy books from Nora Roberts. I don't read romance novels so Amazon's recommendations are dead wrong. In fact, I am sick of getting these recommendations and alerts by email, and I am sick of seeing recommendations on the Amazon web site. With eBay, the same problem surfaces. When Jack goes sifting through my bid history, he finds things that I don't care about even though my user id seems to reflect that I do care about things. For what it is worth, I did a quick netcheck but couldn't find anything useful about how single user ids are used by multiple people. Posted by: John S. Rhodes on August 30, 2002 04:19 PM
Ahhh, two separate issues. When I (used to) visit Amazon, I would see all my wife's recommendations because she had logged in last. That's a cookie problem, because I do have my own separate login ID. If you snooped at my activity on Ebay, you would see only my purchases, because my wife maintains her own login ID. We also maintain separate e-mail accounts. I suggest using a login ID other than your e-mail address, because it's natural for people to assume your e-mail address represents you. It can cause quite a bit of trouble if it doesn't. Posted by: Jack on August 30, 2002 05:45 PM
I have a real business problem that I thought eBay could help me solve. Big companies are typically interested in your business only if you're a multi-million dollar account, or they can handle your transaction with minimum fuss. I'm guessing your need for human interaction exceeds their fuss level... sort of like how my bank wants to charge me a fee if I want to go inside the bank to talk to someone. "Use the automated ATM and don't cause a fuss." Posted by: Jack on August 30, 2002 11:43 PM
Would be interesting to know other example companies that do their best to hide their customer support and email contact information. Someone once said to me "a web site should be, at a minimum, as useful as a business card, with easy access to the company contact information" So the question is why do companies insist on hiding this information?
They hide the contact details because they don't want to be contacted; they just don't have staff to deal with enquiries. Some probably genuinely believe their sites are so wonderful noone will ever need to contact them anyway.
Indeed. Think www.yahoo.com may be another site that hides the contact details beautifully. Its just so frustrating given the web is "meant" to be a 'channel' to your customers. Posted by: daniel on August 31, 2002 01:50 PM
Cost per customer contact is at the heart of things here. On a website, cost is initially high, and you pay mostly to scale up your hardware as you increase customers. When you have a high number of customers you cost per customer moves towards zero. Personal contact cost is MUCH higher, and scales worse. It should cost more per customer to deal with 5 customer contacs then 1 due to rise in complexity. Yes, it's truly annoying. Yes, they probably lose out on some large customers. People start to lie about how important they are. Those who truly are important get ignored with the rest. I was responsible for purchasing over $40,000 of equipment from Dell over the past 4 years, but that didn't stop me from having to sue them to take back a monitor when they sent me the wrong one. What starts to scare me is that they push people to contact them by e-mail, which SHOULD be cheaper to respond to (cheaper connectivity and less call forcasting problems), but they train customers to call because thier e-mail response is so slow. -Jeff Posted by: Jeff Albro on September 3, 2002 12:57 PM
I completely understand why eBay doesn't readily post contact information. They are essentially providing auction software to everyone, sort of the way Movable Type provides content management software. eBay is not a middleman, and they do everything they can to make that clear. If they provided easy access to contact information, users would constantly call just to find out how to sell something online (instead of reading the directions) or to ask why no one has bid on their stuff, or to find out why they haven't been paid by the buyer yet, or blah blah blah. eBay would be deluged, customer support costs would skyrocket, and the idea of being able to post my lot of Sanrio collectibles and reach an enormous audience of greedy teens at a risk of only 50 cents will fly out the window like doves in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. What I don't get, though, is not returning a call for a potentially large account if they provide a contact telephone number for that purpose. Of course, if you were calling a generic number and reaching a receptionist, they probably won't call back. It is very possible that they don't even have people there who take care of such a function. Sure, they have PR and sales guys, but they probably handle outside promotions, such as their Rosie auctions or Disney or whatever.
It is interesting to bring up customer service problems, though. I recently went through a company that was referred by DealMac (www.dealmac.com) and am embroiled in the most horrible nightmare of customer service. First, they ship the monitor in a sub-standard box that is so weak the bottom side ripped out and the monitor was packed with miscellaneous styrofoam pieces. Apalling! It was broken, not surprisingly, and trying to return it has been hell - no one will respond, and they have a "let us know in 7 days or we won't help you" policy. Well, what if you e-mail well within the 7 days but no one lets you know they are even working on it?! I would be very surprised if they get any repeat business. This is why I hate Internet shopping. Posted by: Lydia on September 3, 2002 06:07 PM
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