posted on April 19, 2009 08:15:07 PM new
AKA, why you have non-paying bidders!
Ebay says they know about the problem with e-checks but what they are not talking about is the BIG problems with Checkout in general.
I have made 2 purchases on ebay in the last 3 weeks and both times were a major headache.
The first purchase was from a seller who was using a 3rd party checkout - Channel Advisor. The ebay checkout redirect just plain did not work and the transaction did not show up in PayPal's Send Money tab for auctions. This purchase was from a bigbox seller. After contacting the seller several times, I ended up having to call their customer service department and paid by credit card.
The second purchase today was even worse. I made the purchase for a relative (new ebay account) and then set up a new PayPal account for her. When we tried to pay for the order, the insanity began.... ebay checkout popped up the PayPal window, she typed in her password then a new ebay login window popped up.
She typed in her password and an ebay window opened with the error "Sorry, you've hit a speed bump!
Please try again in a few minutes. If this problem persists, report an issue to eBay support."
We tried it again about 4 times, each time with the same result. Even tried it from a different computer since I have my security settings fairly high. After wasting about 30 minutes, I had her use the Send Money tab to pay for the order but how many newbies would even know how to look for the PayPal Send Money tab?
We reported the problem to ebay and this is their reply:
Thank you for writing eBay in regard to the difficulty you are experiencing requesting the total from the seller. (we reported a problem with checkout)
I understand your question and want to quickly and responsively resolve
your issue. In this case, I'm sorry for the inconvenience this might have caused you and I appreciate the opportunity to help you with this situation.
However, I would like to inform you that, currently there is an intermittent issue which is going on with the site and this is the reason why some of our eBay members including you are facing a similar
problem.
In such a situation, what I've done is, I have put you on an urgent note and forwarded the information that you provided to our engineers for further investigation. Thanks for taking the time to let us know.
Additionally, I've also gone ahead and filed a report with our Customer
Support team in order to get it fixed for you and other members as soon as possible. I do appreciate your patience while our engineers get it fixed for you and other members.
As a workaround, I would suggest you to contact the seller to let them know about the problem personally. It seems that their is an issue with the seller's PayPal email address which they have on file for the
listing and this can be corretted from the seller' end.
To request the seller's phone number, follow these steps:
1. Click the "Advanced Search" link at the top of most eBay pages.
2. Click the "Find Contact Information" link under the "Members" heading
on the left side of the page.
3. Enter the member's User ID and the Item number.
4. Click the "Search" button.
Please understand that occasionally circumstances arise to create these
unfortunate situations. Although we work hard to minimize the frequency of these events, sometimes the situation is beyond our control
When site issues like these do arise, we work hard to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. This is very important to us, as we want our users to enjoy full access to our site and all of the features
available.
I do agree that at this time this email has not resolved your problem, but please bear with us till this gets resolved. Moreover, I would like to assure you that your eBay account is in good standing and you are a
confirmed member of the eBay.
We thank you in advance for your cooperation, and wish you luck with your future eBay transactions.
************
I see customer service responses have improved greatly.
Hope y'all have better experiences than we did today but it makes me wonder how many new users have walked away from ebay cussing and refusing to come back again.
