posted on October 16, 2000 07:49:56 AM new
After last nights outage, which officially lasted 57 minutes, but there were continued site problems long after, I awaited word for several hours about auction extensions. it was not forthcoming. End of auction notices started to go out. I already had e-mails from irate bidders who couldn't bid. When it became apparent that there would be no extension, I was angry, I lost hundreds of dollars last night. I said to myself, the least they can do is give me credit for those auctions, so I wrote eBay using the support form. This morning I receive:
"Thank you for writing eBay Customer Support. I would be glad to assist
you.
I can understand your concern and frustration. The site was taken down
for some emergency maintenance. Auctions were not extended in
accordance with our System Outage policy, located at:
Unfortunately, we cannot refund fees in this instance. We strive to
provide you with the best service that we possibly can, but please
understand that in our User Agreement with you, we do not guarantee
continuous and uninterrupted access to all areas of our site.
Please accept our apology for any inconvenience this may have caused."
Your typical eBay form letter. This made me even madder.
No explanation of why the outage occured. If it was emergency maintenance on existing systems, I possibly could understand. But if it was done to introduce new things, it was inexcusable.
It would have cost eBay nothing to extend the auctions affected, would hav3e cost them little to at least have refunded fees, and nothing to give users a reasonable explanation of what happened.
Instead, I am left with hundreds of dollars in losses, am angry with eBay, and the way this was handled, and users now have to ask themselves will this be the typically way they will be treated in the future.
"Treat them like mushrooms, keep them in the dark and feed them...."
posted on October 16, 2000 08:09:43 AM new
I feel your pain drexel. Been there, gotten screwed too, just like you and hundreds of other sellers. The solution requires all sellers to pull together to force changes at ebay. Don't think that will happen anytime soon. As soon as one leaves another takes his/her place.
posted on October 16, 2000 03:50:53 PM new
EBay hasn't said exactly what they took the site down for. I have heard emergency maintenance, preventive maintenance, someone even said it was to prevent a problem with something they were doing today.
That said, after about 10 e-mails, including a couple of back and forth exchanges, and two phone calls, they did finally, and grudgingly, agree to credit my fees back for the 22 auctions I had end during the "outage". At least one support person agreed, and I sent them the auction numbers. The credits have no appeared on my account.
This small credit will in no way compensate me for what I lost in bids. One item that I had turned down $200 for ended up at $75. Who knows what it might have brought.
It would have done absolutely no harm to have extended auctions. Despiote their arguments that the outage lasted onlyt 57 minutes, policies are meant to be changed and adapted to the situation. In this case it really wasn't an "outage" the site was taken down by eBay, with no notice. In reality, I find their timing of the outage suspect, as many functions still weren't working long after the official end of the outage.
