Useful Components Main Contents Page
Useful Components "The Trouble
With (i)bay" Page
Updated 04-JAN-2021 - If you're interested, you can now
click on the nice safe ebay approved 'green padlocked'
links below for the latest ebay "Fun:)"
Of course ebay, I'd love
to upgrade to the new, useless,
pathetic, ebay shop style,
right? But then you wouldn't
be reading this page :)
I despair. The ebay
programming monkeys have screwed
International Postage Rate
Tables. Obviously, sending
to AUS is the same price as to the
EU. No, it's not.
Obviously sending to the USA is
the same price as to Europe.
No, it's not. But the
programming monkey children at
ebay think that it is. If
your post to Ireland and EU looks
a bit expensive, it's because ebay
is a disfunctional crap website
that is in the process of dieing
on its pathetic sorry arse.
Sorry about that. From
experience, I call it "The Nokia
Syndrome." Sounds like a
film! Meanwhile, economy
overseas postage reflects an
average for rates to all global
locations with good postal
services. Thanks for that,
ebay UK general manager Murray
Lambell, who is "Responsible for
all ebay UK activities," now that
Robert Hatrell has been promoted
to ebay europe V.P. How did
that happen? Screw your
sellers, screw your customers,
just climb that greasy pole, eh
Robbo? Robert Hattrell did
geography at Oxford
University. Goodness help us
all, and the colossal mess that
you've left behind for others to
deal with. Eh, Murray? :)
New Year 2021 thanks also to
Suella Braverman who, as Attorney
General in the UK, has ignored my
notification of ebay system
failures causing retail fraud on
many repeated occasions. If
you want to read about it, copy
and paste at will:)
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/ebay_main_page.html
I first started updating this page on 3rd
October 2020 and gave up the will to
live. If you want to hear a fairly
competent middle-aged electronics engineer
having several entirely valid arguments with
many, many, ebay customer so-called 'support'
telephone liars, you can now follow
the nice 'green padlocked' officially ebay
approved links below. What fun!
Ebay Isn't very good when it comes to
customer service for sellers. In fact, they are absolutely
awful. There will be some more pages visible here
soon. For now, here is the sorry story of closing down my
"Interesting Electronics" ebay shop. This is the page that
was placed on the front page of the shop for a couple of weeks
prior to closure. It was updated as the process went along
and is shown here for archive purposes.
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/ebay_main_page.html
The
Closing of Ebay Shop Interesting Electronics due to UK VAT
Limit Related Invisible Sales Throttling or Capping Systems.
Patience ended. There's no point
in making life more difficult than it has to be.
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/i_e_closure.html
Ebay,
and Invisible Sales Throttling, Caps, Levelling or Limits
Related to UK VAT Thresholds
Figment of a paranoid imagination or
obvious mathematical truth? You decide. I am not
alone.
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/ebay_vat_throttle.html
30th
September 2019, Ebay Loses Orders From
The System and Blames Everyone Else
You would think that not losing
orders in an online marketplace system is fairly basic and
essential. No, actually. According to ebay seller
support, you should expect this to happen.
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/missing_orders/missing_orders.html
1st
October 2019, Ebay Remove Vital Functionality From Seller
Hub By Way Of An Upgrade
Your new web page design may arguably be
more mobile friendly according to several outdated measures in the
Ladybird book of, "How To, Web Design For Kiddies," but that's not
very helpful if it no longer actually works.
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/broken_hub/broken_hub.html
2nd
March 2020, Proof That The Ebay Messaging System Lost a
Vital Message and Their Pathetic Response
I've long suspected that the ebay
messaging system has been losing messages sent to me from
customers and vice-versa, particularly when they are using an
ebay site other than ebay.co.uk. Here's just one example,
and a recording of the telephone call to ebay seller "support,"
which did little to make me happy. Quite the reverse, in
fact.
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/missing_messages/ebay_missing_messages.html
7th
April 2020, Ebay's Much Vaunted
Multi-Buy Promotions Fail, Make Me
Guilty of Retail Fraud, and their
Pathetic Response
On
the 7th April a customer alerted me to the
fact that when he had bought four items,
correctly using shopping cart and
everything, that he had been charged the
full price for one item rather than the
multiple purchase reduction price.
That's retail fraud! Here is the
ebay response so far. I've since
added many more instances of systematic
Multi-Buy Promotion failures, and some
analysis.
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/multi_buy_fail/multi_buy_fail.html
28-SEP-2020,
Ebay Systems Fail To Apply A
Simple Overseas Postage Rate
Correctly, I get Blamed For it,
and Effectively Called A Liar.
Oh dear. It's the multi-buy
promotions failure excuses all over
again. "You changed the listing
after the customer placed the
order." No, I did not!
"Yes sir, you did." No, I
didn't!
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/overseas_post/overseas_post.html
01-OCT-2020,
How Ebay Tells Your Customers That
You Are On Holiday and Not
Processing Orders, When You are at
Home, and Very Much Processing All
Orders Within 24 Hours
For
six days at the end of August to the
beginning of September, Ebay was busy
telling potential customers that I was on
holiday on many of my listings and not
processing orders at this time.
"Don't Worry," they said on the 'phone,
"It won't affect your sales."
Really? You have to be pulling my
chain!
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/seller_away/seller_away.html
This is yet another really awful software 'frig' to add
some data to Royal Mail 2D barcode labels when printed via
the ridiculously time-consuming ebay system. I can
only assume that some people actually use it, meanwhile the
rest of us who print address labels by a proper method have
to manually remove ebay computer garbage from the
text. Something is seriously wrong at
Ebay Politburo Central. Have we sacked everyone who used
to understand the system properly and employed some cheap
company to kludge every software change demanded by the
marketing department for a whopping bonus? Surely not!
https://www.interestingelectronics.com/old/henrys_interesting_electronics/customer_service/ebay/address_garbage/address_garbage.html
Thanks
then, Robert Hattrell,
SVP of ebay UK, who is
mentioned in many of
those later telephone
calls and who, "Leads
eBay’s business in
Europe and is
accountable for all
operations in that
market." This
includes fraudulent
retail price
misrepresentation on a
regular and ongoing
basis, of which you were
first notified on 7th
April 2020.
"He
is passionate about
consumer sellers, small
businesses and the role
technology and eBay play
in powering
entrepreneurship and
creating
opportunity."
Really? Mere
'passion' doesn't seem
to be making the Oxford
educated geographer
grade for the leader of
a competent online
marketplace.
__________________________________________________
General Ebay News
Please bear with me while while I spend about three hours
of each day talking to the ebay village idiots on the
telephone as heard above, and making sure that it is fully
documented here.
Multi-Buy Promotion Offers
Multi-Buy Promotion offers are currently available on some of
my listings when viewed in the UK, and possibly on some
overseas sites. It is not available in all countries for
inexplicable reasons. I would happily put a global
multi-buy offer across every listing, and that is supposed to
work in a given order of precedence if another promotion
exists. It doesn't work, and it causes retail price
misrepresentation mayhem when applied. There is also
another nasty flaw. At the moment, ebay systems are
merrily turning my multi-buy promotions on-and-off, probably
to limit my sales as discussed above. If you view a page
with a promotion and then ebay turns it off in the background,
you might click on a reduced price for more than one item and
be charged the full price. I will usually spot this
manually, but if you see this happen, please, please
contact me via a site message. I will always refund the
difference but it might take a couple of days while I beat the
customer 'support' telephone line around the head with yet
another example of ebay retail fraud, and try to get the fees
back on the refund to prevent them benefiting from corporate
fraud.
International Postage Rates
Prior to a few months ago, using international postage rate
tables as a seller would result in misleading prices being
displayed in search results on overseas sites. I first
reported this as an ebay site problem about five years
ago. Yes, Really! After much telephoning over
months I was finally told it would take two years to
fix. It took five. The incompetence of ebay boggles the
mind. This was fixed recently however, and this finally
allows me to send packets to Italy and some other countries
with lossy postal services. If the economy international
post price comes up as £12.95 in the postage rates tab, you're
in a country with a lossy postal service and unfortunately,
it's the only option available. A tracked, signed, or
tracked and signed service will be used. It's expensive
for small single items, but don't forget it's a flat rate for
any quantity of anything from the shop provided that you pay
for everything together using shopping cart.
"Economy International Post," is now Royal Mail Standard Small
packet Airmail. Australia, the USA, New Zealand and many
others remains the stated amount for any amount of anything,
and is about 98% reliable. You'll always get a refund if
it doesn't arrive in 31 days but it's usually there within 14
working days.
Listing Title Auto-Translation
I've noticed recently that some 'people' in ebay upper and
middle management have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to
auto-translate most listing titles shown in search results on
various non-English speaking sites, certainly France and
Germany. I can only apologise and assure valued overseas
customers that responsible ebay sellers around the world are
complaining bitterly about this stupid and useless new
system. I know that I certainly am, and I've recorded
all the telephone calls for later publication. It works
particularly badly for many technical items and is likely to
be responsible for a 50% drop in my overseas sales. I
swear, that if you have more than two brain cells and work in
the ebay global management team, you'll shortly be sacked for
being over-qualified. Meanwhile, please click through
the badly mis-translated titles in the search results, where
you will probably find what you were actually looking for in
the first instance. Anyone can Google translate what you
find there, but doing it automatically for listing titles via
some translation company that you bought for a small fortune
is for the management idiots who made a big mistake and are
trying to cover it up.
As a last resort, you can always type ebay.co.uk into your
browser and see the search results listed properly.
Hidden Restrictions and
Listing Search Downgrades / Item Suddenly Unavailable
After careful statistical analysis of two and a half years of
sales data across two ebay shops in my name, I'm fully aware
of the system that frequently hides or downgrades listings, or
causes unaccountable payment failures followed by a message to
the customer saying that, "This item is no longer available,"
despite my being fully VAT registered, having approached the
UK threshold more than eighteen months ago. This is to
protect ebay from being held responsible for the unpaid VAT of
unregistered sellers trading above £85K per annum in the UK,
which they are according to UK law. The fact that this
illegal cap stays in place on my squeaky-clean account must be
due to its clandestine nature, or ebay incompetence in
general. If you have tried to pay for an item or
suddenly can't find it any more, be assured that it is still
there and is available for sale. This applies
particularly to buyers from overseas who might find that the
item is available only if they type ebay.co.uk into their
browser.
The pointless telephone battles on these and other issues will
continue. I, and many other honest sellers are now
failing to see any possible funny side to it. If
you'd like to contact me with similar well-documented
experiences, you can do a bit of research for contact info or
maybe see the image below.
Thankyou for reading to the end.
Henry J. Walmsley.
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