Saturday was a frustrating day on eBay! You know exactly what I’m talking about if you attempted to search for something and received zero or limited results! eBay is the biggest auction power house, yet left users stranded without the ability to search. The search function is the KEY COMPONENT that connects millions of buyers and sellers, without this capability eBay is useless!
As a seller who had auctions ending that night, this was a complete nightmare! No one could find my products, yet the people who had my stuff on their “watch” list could swoop in and grab a bargain! I was also a prospective buyer that night and became so frustrated with eBay that I shopped at Amazon instead!
Below is a portion of the statement made by eBay President Lorrie Norrington regarding the situation.
“We know this is a really busy time for sellers ramping up for the holiday season. We’re sorry that this technical issue occurred, causing search to return limited or no results throughout the day Saturday, and we regret any potential impact to your business. Our teams worked around the clock to restore functionality as quickly as possible. Please accept our sincere apologies, and thanks for your patience as we resolved this issue.
Our first priority has been to fully restore search functionality. We will now be assessing the economic impact of this issue and will be compensating sellers appropriately. In the meantime, per our policy, we will be issuing full fee credits automatically for affected listings.”
I am curious how eBay will deem which auctions were “affected”. In my opinion, anyone who had merchandise listed for sale was “affected”. Losing an entire day of traffic is detrimental to any business! With millions of users, eBay could face a hefty compensation bill!
Then, on 11/22 I received the following message in my eBay inbox.
“eBay Sellers:
A few of you may recently have received a note from eBay in your My Messages inbox with the subject line: “50% OFF Auction-style Insertion Fees–Nov 23-25.” Unfortunately, this message was sent in error: There was a promotion planned for this coming week that was cancelled. There are currently no plans for a 50% off Insertion Fee Promotion on the dates mentioned in the prior email. Please note that any listings created during these dates will be subject to normal Insertion Fees.
We apologize for any confusion that this may have caused.”
I am curious how many more mistakes eBay is going to make during this holiday season. I was planning on posting merchandise and taking advantage of the 50% off insertion discount; however, this is just another screw up by eBay. I am starting to become paranoid. Perhaps eBay knows they will be reimbursing a lot of fees and decided to revoke their already communicated discounts? It seems very dishonest to say the least! Whatever their reason, this is just another disappointment!
I have lost faith in eBay and will be researching other online auction sites to sell my merchandise! Thoughts? Recommendations?