Ebay authentication team at London Jewellery show

[auctiongabble]

Hi All,

As previously posted i mentioned i would be visiting a jewellery show in London and will be talking to the ebay authentication team at the show, well i was able to do that today and this was how it went.

Being asked how my sales are:

Telling the ebay rep that my sales are down 80% and im not the only one as many are experiencing the same since Feb, do you happen to read the members forum?

Her reply, oh someone else mentioned about poor sales but it was news to her and she doesn't and not many ebay personel read these forums.

She mentioned the usual: are you ensuring titles are good, photos are good and using many photos, all item specifics are completed and ensuring main keywords in first 4 words of title.  There was ntohing that could be advised other than promotions! She saw nothing wrong that paying 14.9% fees and ebays recomended ad fee of 12% would leave very little profit.  Also the in balance between private sellers paying no fees and getting 300 free listings per month compared to business sellers having to pay £25 plus VAT for shop to get 250 free listings.

I raised the point, business sellers selling in jewellery catergory are paying 14.9% in fees if above standard rating, what are we getting for that? Her response 'A platform', as with all businesses costs have gone up and ebay is a business to make profit!

To which i commented, a platform that has glitches from 1 wk to the next, Support that is no good (unless you get through to dublin), a platform that is loosing business sellers because ebay panicked about V****d and went about it all wrong.  Ebay as a platform worked well about 4 years ago, Since the new ceo came on board was the turning point and start of the decline on here.

Atleast 2 years ago i raised a number of improvements to authentication on how to better provide detail reports to sellers when items fail.  All i got was 'Yeah things are slow to be implemented within authentication for improvements'

She took no notes down throughout the entire conversation and i have missed some parts out.

To summarise, ebay see no issues and all that is important to them is their profit margin at the cost of damaging business sellers and loosing business sellers.

dave@ebay 

I messaged you and tagged you in a post regarding what you wrote about Global shipping 

Ebay authentication at the show were unaware that jewellery and precious metals are prohibited items with global shipping.... this is your own partned international courier service that you provide!

Can i have a reply by Wednesday?

kat@ebay 

I have raised many if not all the points above in weekly chat and i am told feedback will go the the relevant departments.  My feedback and advice to the authentication team 2 years ago was to a team leader within that department.  Meeting with the ebay authentication team today clearly shows that nothing is dealt and yet we get told 'it will be passed as feedback'.

My suggestion is that a senior manager within ebay who deals with 'feedback' is invited to participate in the weekly chats or have them contact me directly to discuss in more detail.

Please do not tell me to contact support regarding this matter as it is beyond their level

[bojangled]

@auctiongabble thanks for posting your findings.

Sadly I think the community chat is just a handling exercise. The lack of actual input from any other department, which has been asked for many times, speaks volumes.

The glitches, poor communication and lack of support for business sellers has finally made me switch off. 

For me eBay’s prime activity is now selling advertising space, via promoted listings. That’s not a service I’m interested in. 

Jo

[auctiongabble]

You are right, i think they will handle queries regarding simple matters and any form of complaint they have proven many times that they can't discuss it and the whole 'passing it back as feedback' is corporate talk for brushing it under the carpet and not dealing with it.  They can say all they want about it not being like this but ive seen it so many times within corporate companies.

[pegr-834437]

A simple way to prove its not just sweeping it under the carpet is to get management on the weekly chat or have a sticky thread with all of the questions awaiting answers. That way everyone can see just how many questions have been passed back and completely forgotten about.

With regards to the rep not knowing sales are bad, surely thats the first job of the rep to know how sales are doing for the huge/big/medium/small businesses on your platform. They then can offer tailored advice and not just the generic copy and paste (which eBay seem to love) of pay us more and maybe it'll sell. If I was management within eBay and somebody was representing my company and they didnt know the basics they'd not be in a job for very long, its the least I'd be expecting.

[theelench]

What you say about your chat with ebay's Authentication Team rep.  at the London Jewellery Show sounds remarkably similar to reports by other sellers who visited Ebay Opens, this year / last year.

The claims that they no nothing about specific problems that are discussed daily on here and if there is any response, it's so often that the question will be passed back to the "relevant team".

But above all, the attitude.  "She took no notes throughout..."  sounds like a bored employee who knows nothing, doesn't want to know anything and isn't interested enough to learn more.

It reminds me of my attitude when, many years ago, I worked briefly for the Alfred Marks Temp. Agency in London.  I didn't care about any company's prospects down the line, all that was important to me was the boss's signature on my time sheet so I got paid. 

Why should I ?  I wouldn't be there in a month or three.

Sounds to me like ebay employees only incentive is to get their next pay-cheque and like many sellers, realise that they are totally expendable and look no further than that.