posted on March 26, 2001 01:21:10 AM
Firstly, an outage is a fact of life. They are going to happen from time to time, no matter what sophistication level of hardware and software eBay employ. The best equipment in the world will fail from time to time.
With this self evident truth, it must be encumbant on eBay to recognise this and have acceptable policys in place to cater for the frustration of sellers and buyers alike.
If properley handled, an outage is perhaps the best opportunity that eBay will ever have to improve customer relations and secure customer loyalty.
Any outage, be it for a minute or an hour, will adversely affect a user.
The simplest soloution is to automatically extend auctions immediately an outage occurs.
Sellers should not have to take a loss which is what eBay expects sellers to do.
When a sellers auction closes after running for its fully alloted time, ebay will also benefit, in as much as they collect the maximum amount of commission and not a reduced amount, as would often be the case with bidders not being able to bid towards an auctions close.
On a personal level, all of my auctions carry a clear statement that any of my auctions which are inaccesible at the scheduled closing time, will be declared null and void and will be re-listed. I consider this to be the only fair thing to bidders and myself. As we all know, many good bids often come in the last minutes of an auction.
At the end of the day I am a business, not a benevolent charity.
Until eBay remove the blinkers and barriers, the likelyhood of a supportive customer base is non-existent.
The mark of any good business is not always the big things, but the ability and willingness to do the little things well.
Thanks.
