Question
Arghhhhh: Can't use the 'Ask Seller a Question' feature. Getting error message.
F = Fire Trucked
U = Up
B = Beyond
A = All
R = Recognition
Answer
While I don't know the specific cause of any individual problem it seems reasonable when knowledgeable people state that eBay does not make sufficient investment in upgrading, testing and maintaining it's system.
eBay does not spend enough money in hiring qualified people, providing training, purchasing sufficient h/w and s/w, testing and allowing for backups.
This shows in incidents like the recent PayPal crash, ongoing accounting problems, billing issues, disappearing Stores and the near daily glitches like the one you have mentioned.
Add to those the poor communications and nearly nonexistence of satisfactory customer service and you have a clear pattern.
eBay makes plenty of profit. Why won't they spend the necessary money to maintain a minimal level of satisfactory service?
You'll see the answer reported later today. That's when the Quarterly Report is released.
Profits will be approx. 50% higher than last year. eBay can't maintain that level of profit growth and spend funds on a reasonable levels of service.
eBay needs to show that level of profit growth to maintain the high P/E ratio of the stock.
So eBay faces the question of whether to maintain high short term profits and support the ever growing stock price or spend money on customer support.
Given that customers have few choices to use other sites because of eBay's virtual monopoly on the marketplace the management makes the ongoing decision to maintain profit growth.
That is likely a good short term management decision. We, as sellers, happen to get screwed but so what, life's not fair.
So if you miss reasonable customer service and adequate system performance you can see where the money that could provide it is going by reading the Quarterly Report later today.
All Hail eBay Nation.
Answer
I am sure you are exactly right. They may have to get to the point where they totally self destruct before any competition can even try to get started. Typically businesses run like this do self destruct eventually. The "what did you do for me lately" required by shareholders just gets harder and harder to respond to. Don't know if it will happen to ebay or not but history would suggest it will eventually. Maryanne
Answer
I found this post on the ebay Store Board just now.
It was in response to a Pink post that most of the "Stores disappearing" problem have been fixed.
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Hans
--please pass this along to "the appropriate department"
Its wonderful that ebay will be posting updates on this message board--however it does nothing to help the 95% of eBay customers who never use the message boards and who have received absolutely no updates or alerts about this bug because eBay neither sent out an email to all affected users nor did they post a notice on the system announcements boards.
Very few customers of a large corporation would ever think to look on a user to user message board for updates to a technical problem, but then again there are very few companies that place as low a priority on customer service as ebay does.
Since eBay is the only large corporation I have ever encountered that thinks so little of its customers that it threatens its users with suspension if they post its customer service number on a message board, it should at least have the decency to notify all customers when a problem exists (FYI the new competitor auction site gladly provides its customers with toll-free 24/7 customer service)