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eBay, please accept the following template for use in keeping your business partners (us sellers) and customers informed when technical problems arise:
Hi <recipient name>,
You may have noticed a problem with your
Chromecast yesterday morning. We found a glitch
with one of our backend systems and spent the day
working hard to get everyone back up and running.
It’s frustrating when technology doesn’t work the
way it should, especially when you’re depending on
it. We’re sorry that this happened.There’s a fix rolling out to all Chromecast devices
now. If you’re still having trouble, let us know here.Thanks for sticking with us.
– rishi, on behalf of the Chromecast team
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Ah, yes, how nice it would be, but I’m afraid it’s probably……(with a nod to Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle)
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I received an email from them this morning saying they tried to call me but my phone number is incorrect(it’s not) and that if I want further assistance to click the Help link etc. I really don’t believe anyone knows what is going on with all the glitches and unusual stuff happening. I have turned on 2 factor authentication so hopefully that will keep me safe from something really malicious.
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Jay,
This has been a problem at eBay since I’ve been a seller, and that’s 20 years or so. I have NEVER understood how this company can do such a poor job of communication. They needlessly anger and worry sellers, and they waste everyone’s time, including their own CS folks, because they simply refuse to deal with this stuff pro-actively.
Whatever they get right pales in comparison to this one thing that they constantly get wrong.
Even after all these years, it still amazes me. I mean, I EXPECT it, I have little hope for change, but it still amazes me that a major corporation can’t do an even half decent job of communicating this stuff.
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Listen to the Tech Talk history of eBay podcasts referenced in another thread – nice,reminders of the way things used to be vs. what they have become.
The second one refers to the big breakdown, even made the news – but back then eBay got in front of it and offered credits, extended end times and made up lost seller fees. Yes, it was all auctions back then, but they were much more accommodating.Contrast that with today when they not only much bigger but have their hands in every thing from shipping to payments, so ostensibly know everything about every transaction. But instead of using that data to make everything smoother, they are inspired to make everything a mess.
Maybe they have gotten so big that one department doesn’t know what the other one is doing. Good things cancelled by bad, the executives dictating direction, and no one can execute.
Still the best marketplace in the world, I just wish they could celebrate what they do better than any other company ( bringing people with cool stuff together with people who like cool stuff ) and stop trying to turn into an Awkward Amazon.
COMMUNICATION IS KEY!
Used to get an email from them on every year anniversary of being a part of the community. Meaningless, but it stopped several years ago.
And, I miss it.
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Didn’t mean to start an eBay dump session (though if ever it was justified, this last month…), just thought the Chromecast message was a masterful piece of communication: concise, apologetic, reasonably informative.
Every piece of machinery as complex as eBay is bound to suffer from regular hiccups, even the occasional catastrophic explosion. But like any machinery, the trouble is probably found where the wheels are squeaking, and eBay’s got thousands of wheels (buyers and sellers) squeaking their asses off through the many inbound communication channels, and you’d expect a decent IT department would be hard-wired into those channels, getting real-time, automated, classified and categorized feedback from calls, chats, emails, facebook, etc.
I imagine a big screen in IT with a schematic of the whole system like the ones in nuclear-power plant control rooms, with system-status reported via gauges, numeric and color-coded indicators:
Green–”system nominal”
Yellow–”probable system malfunction, investigate”
Red–”system failure, urgent attention required”If two people in an hour report disappearing-photos, it might be user error. If 100 people report the same problem in 20 minutes, that’s something to investigate, and when it’s a confirmed internal error, quickly notify the users with actionable information.
This stuff cannot be that frickin’ hard to implement, so if, as you’d expect, eBay does have a reasonably robust system-monitoring process, then, yeah, they’re assholes, because they’re choosing not to close the feedback loop and keep all of us informed. And if that choice is about resource allocation, then double-assholes on them, because once again they’re offloading costs onto the user community.
Not very original ideas, I know, but neither is proactive customer service.
Sorry, Jay, I tried to stay constructive.
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