eBay Very Poor Customer Service and Support

This complaint is concerning a lack of responsiveness of eBay to a customer and very poor support.

On December 28, 2007, after taking over ONE hour for a support person to take care of what turned out to be a simple ordering problem, I lost an opportunity to get a discount because the deadline to take advantage of it ended. As a result of the loss of the discount and the very poor service from the support person, I e-mailed them. All I ever received was an automated response. A copy of it is below:

Thank you for writing to eBay Customer Support.

Your question is very important to us and will be treated with our full attention. We understand the need to get your question answered quickly, and in most circumstances we do so within 24 to 36 hours. However, there may be times when it will take up to 72 hours for you to receive a response. To speed up the process, we ask that you do not send in

multiple messages about the same issue.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please do not respond to this email. Any email sent as a response to this Acknowledgement will not reach us. Should you have another question or would like to send us additional information, please contact us by using our online Contact Customer Support page found at:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_inline/index.html

We appreciate your patience,

eBay Customer Support

Sounds nice doesn't it? Well, what they said (or actually wrote) is false. Because there was no response to actually resolve the problem, I e-mailed them again after the 72 hours had passed. There still was no response except for the automated response listed above.

After 72 hours elapsed, I decided I would try to call them. That was just a futile excercise. I would get the same man everytime and he wouldn't really listen to me and just transfer me to a line where there was a recording. At one point of time he told me basically that going online and communicating that way was actually speach. Speach? I had enough of typing messages back and forth and wanted to actually speak to someone!

So far, there has been NO response from eBay to resolve my concerns. They obviously are in effect saying---"WE DON"T REALLY CARE."

Comment On This

I have NEVER experienced so much frustration as trying to contact ebay customer support. The last time I tried was a year ago, and today, I see NOTHING has changed! Many times I've needed help immediately by a live person and was not able to get it.

I've tried several key words to get to live help or an email link, finally used the word "killer," and up came the email link. They ask you to put in the ID of the person who is harrassing you, and of course there isn't one, because all I wanted to do was clear something up with my account.

I go to the internet and find phone numbers for customer support, but they warned that if ebay gets too many calls, they'll take the numbers away. I called the two numbers, they both have the same voicemail message with a menu, and any number you push, it tells you to GO ONLINE FOR HELP USING AN ADDRESS THAT BRINGS YOU BACK TO THE SAME PAGE WITH PHONE NUMBERS.

I call the numbers several times, and if you try too many options, they cut you off!! They ask you for a five-digit extension number, but how can you know your "party's extension number" if you never spoke to anyone in the first place?!! I was cut off three times. I kept trying different magical combinations to reach someone and I hear "Goodbye." And the call was ended.

I'm at a loss. If I don't get help, then I could end up with charges to my bank account - their "customer support" is actually going to cost me money. I'm thinking about writing a letter and sending it to them by snail mail, but then by that time, it will be too late, and my problem will have magnified. Sad is what it is.