eBay Reveals Seller Concerns in Latest Survey

by: Philip Cohen

You mean to say that eBay is actually concerned about sellers' concerns, or is this just one more demonstration of their utter disingenuousness? Most likely the latter—unless eBay is really starting to feel the pinch and is finally concerned enough to try to find out just what is going wrong.

But don't worry what ever the results of the survey, eBay will interpret them to best suit eBay, assuming anyone at eBay has the intellectual capacity to interpret the survey in any meaningful way ...

Regardless of the outcome, fortunately, it’s always been easy to tell when an eBay/PayPal spokesperson is being disingenuous—their lips are moving ...

by: alaska

Wow! Maybe they actually want to improve. Their favorite question in past surveys was ''How likely are you to recommend eBay to a friend?''

When they get through with ignoring the survey results, maybe they can send out a buyers survey. I have more than a few suggestions for them, as a buyer since March 1997.    

by: dans parts

Hmmm, wonder if there was a choice for "ALL OF THE ABOVE"??

How many of us have had all of these abuses piled on us at one time or another?

by: The End

I sold on Ebay until John Donahoe ruined absolutely everything.
Now it's "in vogue" for the all of his successors to rape the daylights out of sellers profits. I will never go back under these conditions.
My business, my way. No 3rd party buttinskis.
Ebay refuses to know its place in the eCommerce chain.
I'm doing FABulously well online.
Ebay and PayPal are NOT a component in any of it.
In the near future, the Ebay China Channel will be shut down.
Then Ebay will wither and die.  

by: The End

Yes, I would LOVE to drive up to Ebay's front door. Get out, and go directly to Wenig's office. Throw him bodily onto the front lawn (while the sprinklers are on).
Commandeer the entire operation and make everything the way it should be.
If I DID let it remain on the stock market, shares would grow more than 5X overnight, with my secret game plan.
So many people would be logging in to sell and buy, the servers would blow up !

by: Rexford

Beware when eBay sends out a survey. Past experience has shown me that shortly thereafter the survey is followed by a "you spoke, we listened" after which a ton of bricks fall on your head or a case of ACME dynamite explodes in your face.

by: Volvo351

@Rexford

The very 1st Q in the survey is the kicker; if you're not blindly spreading the eBay Gospel [ie. rating that Q at least an 8] they will ignore the rest of your answers.

The published 'results' of these surveys have become entirely predictable. About as much surprise as the North Korean election results!

by: FeelingFroggy

Just more Fleecebay forked tongue speak.

by: Rexford

Volvo351, my guess is that this survey is not sent out to find ways to help sellers, but simply to see how many sellers are not goose stepping to eBay's buyer coddling policies.  

by: pace306

Rexford is %100 correct.

1) any surveys they dont like will get trashed

2) If you are too negative they will ignore your survey

3) "see NO ONE complained about policy XXXXX - therefore we arent going to change it (and you know every one did).

YAWN, more eBay slight of hand nonesence

by: Ric

If eBay is serious about improving the experience for small sellers, they would stop sending out surveys and simply reverse the majority of the anti seller decisions, policy and system changes imposed under the guise of "disruptive innovation" under John Donahoe.

The steps they need to take include:

1) Search:

   a) Retire Cassini and go back to Voyager search engine. Voyager was capable of handling Wild Card searches and was capable of processing longer search strings. Cassini was released despite it's inability to handle those processes.
   b) Best Match as default search order has been a failure from day one. Declining GMV rates prove this.
   c) Reinvigorate the Auction Format by making Time Ending Soonest the default search order. The volume of impulse bidding and purchasing will help restore eBay's lost sales momentum.
   d) Establish a goal of 100% listing visibility for the duration of all listings and delete the language in the User Agreement telling sellers their listings may not be visible of the site.

2) Policy:

     a) Restore control of business policies to sellers and return to being just a venue.
     b) Require buyers to upload photographs as part of the claims process when filing claims for SNAD or damage.  It is 2016, 95% of the population has access to cell phones with digital cameras. The excuse that buyers do not have access to or equipment to take detailed photos to justify their claims is no longer valid. Documentation via digital images will go a long way to eliminate fraudulent returns as long as customer service agents are trained to rely on the images provided by buyers and listing descriptions to determine case outcomes instead of always siding with buyers.

3) Customer Service:

     a) Increase customer service staffing so that buyers and sellers are served by agents located in their country or region. Buyers and sellers should not be transferred to third world agents who barely speak the callers language and who's knowledge of eBay is limited to scripts that appear on computer screens.
     b) Eliminate the need for buyers and sellers to be on hold for an eternity before being connected to an agent. In the event a call center is overloaded, create a call back system that will automatically place a caller in the system so agents will call them back.
     c) Become 100% transparent with regard to system issues and site failures. Eliminate the announcement board since it is never used to convey information and since buyers and sellers do not even know the page exists. When systems go down, place a system announcement at the top of every eBay page alerting users to the current issue as well as an estimate of when the issue is expected to be resolved.
     c) Calls are currently pre screened in help as to the reason buyers/sellers are contacting eBay. Improve call routing so that calls are passed along to agents that have better knowledge of a given reason for contacting eBay.
     d) Improve the quality of training for customer service agents so that calls are consistently resolved according to policy in a single contact.
     e) Improve real time two way communication from corporate system monitoring to Customer Service agents ( and vice versa ) so that agents know in real time when systems are down and can effectively pass along customer alerts back to corporate monitoring when systems go down.

4) Miscellaneous:

     a) Promote from within instead of hiring management from outside the company. This will assure continuity as people running departments will have first hand experience of the intricacies of buying and selling on eBay based on actual experience.
      b) In all things, KISS... Keep It Simple Stupid.
      c) Address issues head in a timely manner on instead of promoting "three year" plans that never produce results and are intended to distract Wall Street from accurately assessing corporate failures, success and progress.
      d) Comprehend and embrace the reality that one size fits all policies have failed to work as intended. Forcing sellers of antiques to conform to systems and policies that work for commodity items has driven sellers out of the marketplace, reduced SKU diversity, alienated buyers, and driven GMV to the lowest rates in company history.        

Last but not least: Face reality - eBay sellers are (were) among eBay's highest volume buyers... treat them that way.

by: toolguy

I didn't get the survey.

eBay must know I'm a happy camper with 100% feedback and 5's across the board.

by: iheartjacksparrow

In reading the choices for "bad experiences," it appears that the minions who read the posts on this site have been taking notes and reporting back to DW since every choice reads like an issue that's been discussed here. Though they did forgot one choice: I have no bad experiences because I sell used aircraft tools.

And as Rexford points out, no matter what answers anyone submits, the result will be "you spoke, we listened," since there's never any transparency when it comes to the results of these surveys.

@Ric - Brilliant post, one of your best yet.

by: FEEbay

@Ric
Amazing post, and well said!

by: FEEbay

@toolguy
I didnt get the survery either, and they KNOW that I am less than satisfied!

by: JQ

What is missing from the above multiple choice question is "Bad selling experience overwhelming relates to the hundreds of sales I did not make last quarter that I would have made in past years due to eBay's policy of manipulating traffic away from my inventory and towards their preferred large sellers."

I almost never have problems with a sale. I get a few unreasonable and/or dishonest buyers, that is just the nature of the business. My real problem is not my clients, it is how eBay manages the site. The buyers are not the problem, management is the problem.

by: Rexford

JQ's post makes me realize that a few bad buyers were much more palatable in the old days when sales were quite amazing.

by: quirkyantiques

Well toolguy-I too have 100% and 5's across the board but that does not mean I am a happy Ebay seller AT ALL. I view Ebay as Russian roulette with about 5/6 chambers loaded. It seems interesting that virtually EVERY seller complaint was listed as an option but like Ric said-this just means they are totally aware of the issues and as usual will not only do nothing to fix it, but will use this survey for more "you spoke-we didn't listen" updates that will further hamper, crush and destroy the few remaining good sellers left there.

by: wasteland-mechanic

I don't know who would be dumb enough to fill this survey out. This vindictive company has dynamited any trust it had with its sellers (except for used aircraft tool sellers of course).

by: Philip Cohen

@Ric,

Great comment; too bad you failed the KISS test; it's far to long for any of the empty suits at eBay to be able to absorb it; such suits are only ever expected to read an "executive summary": half a dozen bullet points of no more than six words each ...

Why does anyone think that surveys never/rarely ask for narrative answers? They are far too hard to analyse even by a human let alone a computer algorithm; that's why they ask pre-formed questions so that the computer can simply count the number of "answers", and invariably obtain responses to the questions to which they likely think they already know the answers (just ask Johnny Ho); the "Other (please specify)" field likely has got as much chance of being analysed as pigs flying, after all, some intelligent human resources would be required to analyse such narrative responses ...

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the unscrupulous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid … http://bit.ly/11F2eas