eBay has had a string
of recent site glitches some major and minor so let’s take a moment and review
some of the most recent issues.
Failure
to communicate- earlier this month reports surfaced of buyers unable to respond
to customer inquiries because of an error with message central effectively
cutting off communication.
PayPal
turned off- In September sellers at random had their accepts PayPal turned to
off effectively stifling sales.
Search
engine down- at the end of august eBay’s search effectively crashed returning
completely unrelated search results.
System
status- Having an issue with the site? Check the system
status dashboard just one problem and you probably guessed it
already it doesn’t work. The new system status dashboard is clean and simple
only problem is its not being used to report issues.
Now
are you ready for the latest and greatest glitch? A spate of sellers have received
notices that they were undercharged for their final value fees for the month of
October and that these fees would appear on their November statement with no
further explanation. So what is going on here why so many glitches? It could
just be an issue of eBay trying to tackle too much too quickly. For example the
seller hub has just reached its first anniversary and the response overall has
been positive it has effectively consolidated features like the selling
manager, sales reports, traffic reports and seller standards into one place
where before it was spread out all over the site and many of the reports were
only available from third parties for a subscription fee. eBay’s mobile app has
just received a needed overhaul as well. A common complaint about the previous
version was that displayed search results were significantly less than those
searches performed from their desktop computers. This was a serious concern to
sellers worried about losing sales because of consumers increasingly favoring shopping
on the go. The more disconcerting aspect of the recent site glitches is that it
could also be a direct result of a change in eBay’s priorities. Back in August
eBay was back on TV air waves in a big way after a long hiatus launching a
major television ad campaign and more arriving now in advance of the holiday
shopping season. So the question could be asked is eBay prioritizing new
traffic over site functionality? It’s very difficult to answer this
definitively but the fact remains that any new converts to eBay will quickly
vanish if this spate of issues continues. Ask any eBay old timer and you will
probably get a very similar response get your house in order first then start
to look for new customers don’t put the cart in front of the horse.