Ebay customer support has been the worst experience I have ever encountered. On 04-08-14, I had
placed an order for Kindle Paperwhite. The transaction went fine and I was waiting for the seller
to ship the product.On 06-08-14, ebay removed the item from the listing without informing me .
Next day I tried to contact the ebay customer care,but the wait time in the queue is always 20-25
minutes , so I called the seller. She told me that it is the problem of ebay server which
accidentally fell out of sync with seller's server and hence all the listings were removed. But
she assured me that since I had paid for the product, it will be delivered within stipulated
time.Next day,even though ebay re-listed all the products of that particular seller, but for me
,the quantity of the product which I purchased was still showing '0'. Out of worry, I mailed ebay
(On 08-08-14) and asked for the clarification on the same but so far they have not replied . I
called ebay customer care on 10-08-14 and was lucky enough to be connected with one of the
customer care representative after a long wait of 20 minutes. When I asked her about the problem
regarding the product , she started giving me stereotypical answers like ' Your money will be
refunded if the item is not delivered, you need not worry ..blah blah ! But she was not telling me
what the real problem was. I asked her directly about the issue , but she was avoiding the direct
answer ( May be she didn't want to accept that it was ebay's server problem,or she might not even
be knowing anything about the issue at the first place ). After 15 minutes, I realized that it is
a waste of time to be asking from her ,so I said 'Thanks' and cut the phone. I thought a chat will
be a better option to know the status of my order , so I chatted with one of the customer care
representative. Here is the text of the chat :-
Shweta G. 12:06:07
Welcome to eBay Live Chat Support. My name is Shweta. How may I assist you today?
Shweta G. 12:06:15
Hello Vaibhav,
vkv1515 12:06:57
Hi Shweta , I had purchased this item 121376954645 . But now it is showing that the item has been
deleated
Shweta G. 12:07:06
I regret for the inconvenience caused to you in this.
Shweta G. 12:07:26
Please help me out with the Paisapay ID , so that I could check with the details.
vkv1515 12:07:30
Please tell me the order status
vkv1515 12:08:03
36979668585
vkv1515 12:08:10
here it is
Shweta G. 12:08:16
Thank you for providing us the information.
Shweta G. 12:08:22
Vaibhav, please allow me a moment while I check details from my end.
vkv1515 12:08:43
ya sure
Shweta G. 12:10:03
I appreciate your patience and I'd like to thank you for waiting.
Shweta G. 12:10:13
I understand your concern over the item that you have paid and now is removed from the site for
the PaisaPay ID: 36979668585.
vkv1515 12:10:23
No Problem
Shweta G. 12:10:26
In case where there is any policy violation on the sellers account his items are removed, same
happened with your seller and his listings were removed which included your purchase.
Shweta G. 12:11:02
In your case the payment was confirmed on 04-Aug-2014, So an Auto-refund will be initiated on 15-
Aug-2013 and will get approved after 5 days. So once your refund is approved you will get a
notification e-mail and accordingly you can check with your bank for the reversal.
vkv1515 12:11:07
No , I talked with the seller , he told that this is the problem of ebay server .
vkv1515 12:11:29
And for your kind info ,the seller account has not been removed
vkv1515 12:11:52
I know that Shweta , Please tell me what is the problem ?
Shweta G. 12:12:14
In case where there is any policy violation on the sellers account his items are removed, same
happened with your seller and his listings were removed which included your purchase.
Shweta G. 12:12:28
The seller listing is removed from ebay not the seller account.
Shweta G. 12:12:42
Whenever the listings are removed from the site, seller does not get an option to enter the
shipping details for that item .
vkv1515 12:12:53
Also, I want to know why ebay doesn't reply to the emails ? I has mailed ebay regarding this
problem on 8th Aug , I have still not got any response from your side
vkv1515 12:13:16
But the seller has again relisted it .
Shweta G. 12:14:43
Its my humble request to you to kindly get in contact with the seller as he is the responsible
person who will be in a better position to assist you in this regard.
vkv1515 12:15:08
I talked to the seller ,he told me that my order is still valid ...But you are telling that
because of policy violation , it was removed
vkv1515 12:15:41
Shweta , Please give me an honest answer on this . Why ebay didnt respond to my mails ?
vkv1515 12:16:32
I want a written clarification from ebay about the problem and my order !
vkv1515 12:17:57
There might be only two things - a) That listing was not valid , so my order will be cancelled and
money will be refunded b)My Order is still valid and the item will be shipped .
System12:18:44
The chat session is being wrapped up.
System12:18:44
The chat session has ended.
..................................................................................................
......
Did you notice that she ended the chat abruptly when I started demanding direct answers !
This is the height of professionalism on eBay's part. frustrated, I immediately called ebay
customer care which connected me to a representative after 25 minutes wait in the queue.When I
asked about the issue, the representative told me that since the seller used to send counterfeited
items to buyers, we have removed the seller from our website ( Which of course was a big lie
because the seller had a feedback rating above 99% and has been one of the best sellers on ebay.
Moreover, The seller is still listed on ebay along with the same Kindle Paperwhite which I had
placed the order for ! ) So , I asked him to connect me with his supervisor ,who came after 15
minutes , he apologized for the inconvenience caused and said that he will personally inquire
about the issue ,talk with the seller too and call me to give me the details today (12-08-14) .
Supervisor's name was Aniket and the complaint Id is 1-32767215334. As expected , the day has
passed but he didn't call me ,nor did he mailed me regarding the issue.
This is extremely irresponsible on ebay's part.
You guys never answer to the point,you try to evade questions . Moreover, you don't like to reply
to the emails.I had mailed ebay on 08-08-14 regarding one of my orders,but I haven't yet received
the reply.(This is not the first time this has happened to me ,this is the third instance when
eBay hasn't replied to my emails ).When I call the customer support,usually i have to wait for an
average of 20-25 minutes in the queue.Who has this much time to waste ? Come on guys ..medieval
ages have gone,now the time is precious.Nobody wants to kill their time over a customer support.
I think ebay has a lot to learn from other e-retailers like flipkart.com Amazon, Snapdeal. If you guys continue on this track, you
will perish very soon. I have already given this feedback to Ebay earlier,but it has been of no
use..now I am wasting my time once again !
Here are my specific suggestions to ebay :-
1) Increase the number of your customer support staff, so that the wait time in the queue can be reduced substantially( I wonder whether your operations manager is even literate to understand this basic concept!) .
2) At least reply to the emails,customer gets more furious and frustrated if you guys go and hide
behind the desk rather than trying to solve the problem and respond properly. And be proactive
..arrange for the call backs to the customer in case he/she is facing some problems.
3) Put your customer support number on the home page so that customer doesn't have to search here
and there for your customer support.
4)Please learn some work ethics and professionalism from flipkart, Amazon India, Snapdeal.com etc ...you guys
are way below their standard.
Now eBay India ...please reply to this post and prove that you respond only when humiliated publicly or keep quiet as always and prove that you are shameless enough to ignore the lashing even at social media..!
