My colleague Thom Stark, who is currently at work on a book about Alexander the Great, recently wrote to me about his experience with using eBay. This is a strong contrast to my last post about Southwest Airlines and is at the opposite end of the scale in terms of Web customer relations. I’ll let him tell his tale of woe:

I recently had occasion to bid on a fairly inexpensive item on eBay. However,
when I tried to place a bid (literally at the last minute, of course – that’s
how you win these things, after all), I discovered that eBay had suspended my
account back in April. As it later transpired, eBay had done so because my
account was “potentially compromised” (their phraseology, not mine).

Now, mind you, my account was never actually compromised. Apparently there
was a major phishing expedition in April and – also apparently – there’s a
helluva lot of phish on eBay, so (and I’m just inferring here) eBay basically
panicked and suspended accounts right and left, regardless of whether there
was any basis to do so. Apart from general incompetence, I mean.

Anyhow, I changed my password – and eBay sent me email confirming that I had
successfully done so – and checked my account activity since April, which was
nada. No transactions, no outstanding unresolved debt, no nothing. Just to
be certain, I also checked my PayPal account, and it, too, was exactly as I’d
last left it.

So I tried to bid on another auction for the item I coveted and, once again, I was unable to do so, because –
SURPRISE! – my account was still suspended. And that’s when the actual story began to develop.

In case you’ve never had the pleasure, eBay provides one and only one way to
receive customer support: its so-called Live Help chat service. (Supposedly
you can email Customer Support – which I tried – but they don’t respond to
emails, so I don’t consider that an actual option.)

The little indicator bar ran endlessly – and I mean I spent 20 minutes
watching the darned thing – without any sign of life on eBay’s end. I came to
the conclusion that there was nobody home, and chalked it up to the fact that
it was by now nearly 8:00pm PDT. So I closed my browser, went on to other
things, and determined to try it again the following day sometime during
normal business hours. Well, that didn’t work either.

Now, as an industry journalist, I long ago acquired an 800 number for eBay,
so that was my next resort. After sitting through the voice menu, I chose the
“customer support” option and pressed the corresponding number on my keypad.

And promptly got a recording that directed me to use Live Help for help with
all eBay customer support issues.

I thought that was somewhat less than helpful, so I again dialed eBay’s
closely-guarded 800 number, and this time I chose the “speak to an operator”
option. When he answered, I told him, “I’d like to speak to a customer
representative.” And he immediately transferred me to the same recording that
directed me to use Live Help for help with all eBay customer support issues.

At this point, I was beginning to lose my patience. Nonetheless, I called
back, got the same operator, and told him, “Don’t transfer me to the
recording that tells me to use Live Help. I can’t get Live Help to work with
my browser and I need to speak to an actual human being about reinstating my
suspended account.”

“Live Help is our only customer support option,” he responded.

“That’s all very well,” I said, “but, as I just told you, it doesn’t work
with my browser, so I need to talk to a customer support representative.”

“There is no customer support representative you can talk to. Live Help is
your only option.”

Huh?

“Okay,” I responded, gritting my teeth, “then I’d like you to transfer me to
your media relations department.”

“Are you a member of the media?”

“Yes.”

Without further conversation, he switched me to the media relations line –
which was answered by a recording, directing me to leave my name, number and
publication, without promising that someone would respond to my call.

Mark Twain advised, “When angry, count ten. When very angry, swear.” Instead,
I left a message, stating that I was planning to write about my eBay customer
service experience, and suggesting that, should eBay want to respond to the
issues it would raise, a media relations representative ought to contact me
in the near future.

I never heard back from them, of course – but I’m sure you guessed that.

In the meantime, I decided that – because it was already past 5:00pm by this
time – the following day I would try using a different browser to contact
Live Help.

Of course it worked like a charm with Internet Explorer 7. The Live Help
operator was polite – unlike the 800 number operator had been – and helpful,
and he reinstated my account during our chat. However, he professed no to
know anything about why Live Help didn’t work with Mozilla 1.7.12 (my default
and preferred browser), nor about why the fact that Live Help seems only to
work with certain specific browsers is only mentioned here (rather
than in the Live Help window, where it would do some actual good), nor about
why there is no list on eBay of which browsers do work with Live Help –
although he mentioned that it’s known to work with Firefox. When I pointed
out that not everyone uses either Firefox or IE, and listed some of the
alternatives (such as Mozilla and Opera) that some subset of eBay’s customers
do use, he told me that his colleagues recommended I contact a different
department about that issue.

That I was not able to do, because – just to put the cherry on top of my eBay
customer support sundae – the Live Help session window automagically closed
itself when Chico, with whom I’d been chatting, logged off, foreclosing any
possibility of my saving a transcript of our session.

Now it seems to me that my experience reveals a number of lessons, some for
eBay users, and, more importantly, others for eBay’s management and
designers:

1. Users should be aware that eBay only supports certain browsers –
especially for the chat-based Live Help service that is its only real form of
customer service.

2. eBay should be aware that its customers may not be using those specific
browsers as their preferred default, and it prominently should post which
browsers it does support on every page of its “suspended and problematic
accounts” section, and in the Live Help popup window itself.

3. Users should be aware that eBay doesn’t respond to email regarding
suspended accounts.

4. Unless it begins responding to such emails, eBay should stop offering
email as a way to inquire about suspended accounts. (Automated, boilerplate
emails that essentially consist of instructions to use Live Help instead,
don’t count.)

5. eBay needs to train its telephone operators to be polite and helpful.
Callers are not a nuisance to you folks – they’re the reason your job exists.
Service with a snarl leaves a bad impression.

6. eBay’s media relations people need to learn to return phone calls. Public
relations and media relations are … well … related. And, if you’re too
busy to be bothered to respond when you’re warned well ahead of time of an
impending corporate black eye, perhaps you should consider another line of
work.

7. eBay’s success is based on its customers. And, just as its customers pay
attention to each other’s ratings for reliability and service, so do they pay
attention to eBay’s own reputation for reliablility and service. Good
managers are accessible to their customers. eBay’s managers are not. On the
face of it, this seems like a very bad idea.

From Wang to WordPerfect, the history of the tech industry is littered with
the corpses of businesses who stopped paying attention to their customers;
whose executives made the fatal mistake of believing in their own
infallibility; who failed to understand that ownership of a market is not a
divine right, and that there is always a competitor ready to take it away
from you, the moment you start taking it for granted.

There is no reserve price on this warning – and bidding begins at $0.02