I was reading through the discussion forums, and on FreeAuctionScripts Discussion Forum, I have seen a post by a respected, and well known internet business owner bargainbloodhound . The post is about a comment made by eBay Stores Team management. eBay's customer service problems are becoming a very serious problem and many big sellers are leaving to different venues. Also couple months ago, eBay launched a survey which had several questions about “paying for customer service“. I have never heard a paid customer service in corporate area. And just a reminder; all the big companies with poor customer service will be out of the game in the long run.
Here's the comment from eBay's stores team;
"and made sure the appropriate teams are aware of your concerns. "
And here's the reply from bargainbloodhound ;
So far I have not heard the CEO of your new competitor use this term--and yes unlike Meg Whitman and eBay who play lip service to the words 'community' and 'community values' but do not practice what they preach, he actually interacts with his new community which includes many eBay PowerSellers who are sick and tired of paying for service that is not delivered or is delivered with so many software bugs that it costs OUR businesses money, a complete lack of customer service (canned replies and Web Forms just don't cut it), billing problems that have continued for 7 months and which have resulted in a class action lawsuit being filed on behalf of sellers, and the list goes on. I also have not heard the customer service reps on the competition's toll free customer service number use the term "appropriate teams" or refer customers to a useless web form system when the customer is complaining about year long glitches that have yet to be fixed.
I am also very offended by eBay's belief that its customers should basically perform free customer service duties for ebay, and the attitude of ebay employees during the brown bag lunch which also mirrored this misguided belief.
Yes, there is an eBay community, but it exists independently of eBay the corporation, and as many recent event have shown that community does not require this venue to remain a community.
eBay seriously needs to take a look in the mirror at what it has become and how far it has strayed from its 'community values'. It needs to stop making every decision based on meeting the next quarter's expectations, and instead think of what it must do to retain its customers for the long term.
More times than not, when a company with a dominant position in its field has lost site of meeting the needs of its customers, its dominance soon fades. In a fast changing field like the Internet this ability to meet customer needs is even more vital.
Perhaps eBay should remember how fast things can change, and make some immediate efforts to correct what it has become--after all it was only a decade ago that the mere mention of commercial activity on the then new world wide web brought a barrage of flames to the speaker--now it is a given and no one would think to question the right of ecommerce companies to trade on the WWW. What will the landscape 10 years from now show and what will eBay's place in that landscape be if it continues to treat paying customers as just another commodity?