posted on September 16, 2001 08:15:47 PM new
Today I discovered a problem with posting Feedback to eBay from AW.
It was brought to my attention by a buyer of one of my auctions that he did not get his Feedback. When I investigated I noticed that several people whose auctions were in PSM and several more auctions long deleted from PSM also did not get their FB even though I previously did a mass FB command in PSM. On each detail screen was the word "error" in red type. I attempted to post their FB again by pressing the "Send Feedback" button on the detail page and when the page refreshed, the date and a check mark was posted to the AW detail page for FB. I thought all was well but when I checked that person's FB on the eBay site I discovered they actually did NOT get the FB. When I refreshed the AW detail screen The date and check mark were both gone and the red "error" was back. I did not notice the state of the #7 key.
One thing I noticed is that the person in the above example had four transactions at the same time (there is no way to combine transactions at this time) and I had posted mass FB for his four auctions as well as other auctions from PSM. Only one FB posted for him and I eventually found that I could not post FB for his other separate auctions from AW, but that I could from eBay. On eBay there was no hint of any problem
When entering the FB of my other auctions that erred, I would first try the "Send Feedback" link on the detail sheet on AW, then when I checked eBay - I find no FB, I then enter FB on eBay, Check for FB on eBay - it's there now. Go on to the next person, try from AW - no FB, try from eBay - yes FB, next person on AW - no, from eBay - yes, and so on for every auction involved.
In simpler terms - I could enter feedback on the eBay site but not from the AW site.
The fact that I could alternately enter FB on EBay successfully and not on AW , tells me this is a problem with AW' communicating to eBay and NOT simply a glitch or down time on eBay. The auctions involved go back over a month so this appears to be an ongoing problem and not simply an eBay glitch.
What bothers me the most about this is that I failed to notice whether or not the #7 key was blue or not. I tend to think it turned blue and stayed blue from the initial sending of FB because as I mentioned above, the date and a check mark do appear when I send FB from the detail page. The #7 key should have instead waited for an acknowledgement from eBay and then turned blue only if the acknowledgment was positive. I will pay better attention to the #7 key and let you know.
In PSM I don't get a warning if one or more mass sent FB's error and if I overlooked the #7 key or it turned blue and stayed blue then I would not know if a buyer didn't get FB until I returned to their detail page to check to see (and mark) if their shipment was received. If they happen to let me know by email or by FB that their item was received then I might not return to the detail screen and just delete the auction from PSM not knowing they didn't get FB. Yea, I know I should always check but I don't always take the time, besides the software should work for me and let me know, not the other way around.
So now that I explained the problem and how it affects me, let me offer a suggestion or two.
Change the FB mechanism so that the FB check box doesn't become checked and the date doesn't appear until and unless there is a positive acknowledgement from eBay.
It could still be checked manually of course.
Make the #7 PSK change to red with any subsequent refresh of the page if there is an error with FB.
(For that matter make any PSK turn red if there is any error with it's associated function.)
And unrelated to the above,
Please add the "Send FB Reminder" button to the main PSM screen that has the PSK's and/or add the PSK's to all the PSM screens.
Please change the PSM listings to again show the shipping price along side the sale price (and a total perhaps?) This was a great reference.
Sorry for being so long winded but I think that explaining the problem as thoroughly as I can from my perspective is more helpful than "This is broke, please fix it"
posted on September 17, 2001 08:42:55 AM new
Hello dgangstee,
We appreciate you taking time out to outline the problem you have been experiencing with our feedback feature as well as providing suggestions on how to best address a glitch such as this. We will definitely pass this along to engineering for them to look into. Last I heard regarding this feedback problem was that this was going to be fixed once the Ebay API was fully integrated with auctionwatch. This should happen shortly and should remedy this problem.
