I have held an eBay account since 2000. I recently noticed that when I sign in a pop up appears "Sign in to eBay with Google". As I have a Google account I thought I would give it a try and clicked on the link. Much to my surprise I found that a new eBay account had been opened using my gmail address. As I already have an acount I did not want another so had to spend time closing the account which I had not asked for in the first place. Apart from the time I had to waste closing the account I was most irritated that I had to enter my address and 'phone number before the account could be closed. I contacted support because I was really angry about it. I had a live chat with one of the eBay support team and got the usual bland and unhelpful response that my comments would be passed to the appropriate team.
I consider the whole thing to be shoddy practice by eBay. They are luring people into opening an account by making them beleive they are signing into the account they already have. The link says "Sign in......" and not "Open an account......". It wouldn't be so bad if there was a message asking if the person was sure they wanted to open an account but no, the account is immediately opened. I also feel that eBay are gathering information about people which they should not have. Why insist on address and 'phone number before the account can be closed? I was also quite shocked to find that the transcript of the chat was sent as a message to my original eBay account. Why was this? I contacted eBay via the account they had opened without me asking for it.
I must admit that I have always liked eBay a lot. I have been with it pretty well from the start but I have seen it change over recent years an there are a lot of things creeping in which are changing the nature of the site. This sign in problem is an example of a lack of transparency where users are lured into thinking they are doing one thing only to find that the outcome is not wht they expected. "Sign in" surely means to sign into an account and not open another account. It should be changed.
