Ebay Customer Support - A Joke

eBay Customer Service - A Joke

Just in recent times, I have had another head-on encounter with ebay. Needless to say, I don't have to declare who the winner was as I sit here in my lonely loser corner.

ebay took down a number of my listings saying that the Titles I choose were infringing their policies, in particular, "keyword spamming".

I had a number of jewelry pieces that featured charms specifically for the Twilight fans. They included hearts, apples, initials of main characters, wolf, lion, lambs, and other related charms. Ebay said that to write "Twilight bracelet ..." was considered "keyword spamming" due to the use of the word "Twilight".

Let me just note at this point that my listings were not taken down as a result of the VeRO programme (whereby the official holder of a copyright or trademark, in a behind-the-scenes agreement with ebay has the right to ask ebay to take down listings which they consider an infringement on their rights). So no legal holder had actually complained about my listings.

Nonetheless, I could more or less see the point ebay was trying to make and I was (forced) to take one of their tutorials concerning "keyword spamming". In that tutorial, they said that their main aim was:

• to provide users with a meaningful and relevant search/buying experience
• ensure Titles and search results were not misleading

One of their recommended, illuminating example they gave in the tutorial was that if someone wanted to sell a generic coffee filter that fitted the Sunbeam coffee makers, the seller could not write in his title "Sunbeam filter ..." or anything that would give viewers the impression that the filter was made by Sunbeam.

Here is the clincher though: Ebay states that the seller could legitimately write as his title "Coffee filters - fits Sunbeam". That, they said, was okay as it was not misleading to the buyer as the seller clearly states what he is selling and its functionality while not wrongly misleading the buyer into thinking that the item was made by Sunbeam.

So having that cleared up for me, I changed the titles of my jewelry pieces to this format: ".. charm bracelet for Twilight fans". No where do I suggest, hint, boldly state that this was an official Twilight piece of jewellery. However I thought (especially given the tutorial example from ebay) that my titles were fair. Buyers in search of these kinds of Twilight related jewelry would be able to find it and see clearly that it is not an official piece of Twilight jewelry but one that was created for Twilight fans.

Well after letting it run for a week or two, ebay once again took down my corrected-titled listings. For the same reason - I was "keyword spamming" and could not use the word "twilight". Imagine. Now even the use of the word "twilight" was prohibited!

I naturally wrote back to ebay. And I didn't even complain about the scores and scores of listings that blatantly infringed that particular policy and were using the "Twilight" word in misleading ways. No, all I asked them was to please help me out.

I had ploughed through their tutorials, done what they asked, changed my titles accordingly, ... but nothing seemed to please them. So maybe they could suggest to me specifically how I could write one of my titles while maintaining these aims:

• that buyers can find my items if they were looking for pieces of jewelry that were dedicated to Twilight fans
• without misrepresentation

Almost 2 days later, I finally got a reply. It said they were happy I wrote in, would be happy to help, but I had to send them an email from the email that was registered on ebay. Slow response but ok. I did that.

Another almost 2 days later, same cut-and-paste answer from ebay.

So this time, I changed my registered email address on ebay, then I rewrote to them from that email address.

Guess what? Within 1-2 days (no one can accuse them of being speedy, that's for sure), another response from ebay. This time, it was a Customer Support Survey request. It stated that I had recently written in to them so could I please give them some feedback as to the level of support I received. Did I find their service good? Did they answer my questions? Did they resolve my problems? Was the customer representative helpful?

What can you say to this?!! Of course I did their survey. Of course I let them know that my questions had not even been attended to. And that I had only received cut-and-paste answers so far.

The gall of them ... to send me a Customer Support Survey when they had not even helped me out in the least bit. Impressive? Yes, only in how lousy their tracking of issues is.

Needless to say, a week and more since then and I have heard nothing from ebay. Great Customer Support indeed.