Today I got a message via email that I was being levied a $15 charge for a returned $2.15 bank payment that eBay had initiated. My curiosity went up because all of my accounts have enough money to pay that. So what went wrong?
One clue was the account number included in the message. They give the last four numbers. I have a number of accounts, but those numbers matched none of them. Not even close. Besides, my seller's fee had been deducted from the proceeds of the one sale I had done in the past year. Why are they taking $2.15 out now, when they already took $1.88?
So I clicked on the little icon for customer service chat room, and the ride began. Three hours and five help "agents" later, my $15 had been credited but no one could fathom what I kept telling them: that is not my account number. I finally told one person who called herself Venus that all of this isn't about the paltry $2.15--this is about the accurate amount of money coming from the correct account for the right reason. I don't want to get assessed a $15 fee for a transaction attempted at someone else's account.
I finally get that the $1.88 is an eBay seller's fee and the $2.15 is a PayPal fee, but whose account is that with the last four digits 2996? Is it my buyer's account? (No). Suppose it was an old account I had forgotten all about. I updated my profile back in January, when I listed my item to sell. Why would they ask that bank account for money on February 15th?
I decided that these unfailingly courteous and earnest people were all in India, and do not have the expertise to trouble shoot this problem of the mystery account number (which has since been deleted, Venus said
). I decided we were suffering a language barrier problem, in that no one seemed able to respond to the question about the 2996 account withdrawal in February when I had updated my profile in January--and no 2996 was anywhere in my profile.
I asked to be given to a supervisor 5 times, reassured them that they were not in trouble, and got nowhere with that. Finally, after three hours, five agents and over 4 pages of script (I made copies of this marathon chat session's dialog as we went along, and I saved it) I had to leave. I asked the last person, Greg (back at Billing again but with a different agent, who said he could find no one at eBay with a 2996 account number) to give my email address to his supervisor and have him/her email me so I could find out about that account number. It's four hours later, and my email has no sch message.
Each time I was passed off to a new agent, I was entreated to fill out the questionnaire when done. I did. I left a smoldering report of my marathon-to-nowhere, and promised I would tell many people what happened. So here I am!
I've heard people complaining about the customer service from those remote offices full of partly trained people, but I have never had to slog through this customer service muck bath on my own.
I have a solution. I am closing my eBay account. Next time I need to sell something, I will use Uncle Henry's or Amazon.com. They haven't failed me yet.
One clue was the account number included in the message. They give the last four numbers. I have a number of accounts, but those numbers matched none of them. Not even close. Besides, my seller's fee had been deducted from the proceeds of the one sale I had done in the past year. Why are they taking $2.15 out now, when they already took $1.88?
So I clicked on the little icon for customer service chat room, and the ride began. Three hours and five help "agents" later, my $15 had been credited but no one could fathom what I kept telling them: that is not my account number. I finally told one person who called herself Venus that all of this isn't about the paltry $2.15--this is about the accurate amount of money coming from the correct account for the right reason. I don't want to get assessed a $15 fee for a transaction attempted at someone else's account.
I finally get that the $1.88 is an eBay seller's fee and the $2.15 is a PayPal fee, but whose account is that with the last four digits 2996? Is it my buyer's account? (No). Suppose it was an old account I had forgotten all about. I updated my profile back in January, when I listed my item to sell. Why would they ask that bank account for money on February 15th?
I decided that these unfailingly courteous and earnest people were all in India, and do not have the expertise to trouble shoot this problem of the mystery account number (which has since been deleted, Venus said
). I decided we were suffering a language barrier problem, in that no one seemed able to respond to the question about the 2996 account withdrawal in February when I had updated my profile in January--and no 2996 was anywhere in my profile. I asked to be given to a supervisor 5 times, reassured them that they were not in trouble, and got nowhere with that. Finally, after three hours, five agents and over 4 pages of script (I made copies of this marathon chat session's dialog as we went along, and I saved it) I had to leave. I asked the last person, Greg (back at Billing again but with a different agent, who said he could find no one at eBay with a 2996 account number) to give my email address to his supervisor and have him/her email me so I could find out about that account number. It's four hours later, and my email has no sch message.
Each time I was passed off to a new agent, I was entreated to fill out the questionnaire when done. I did. I left a smoldering report of my marathon-to-nowhere, and promised I would tell many people what happened.
So here I am! I've heard people complaining about the customer service from those remote offices full of partly trained people, but I have never had to slog through this customer service muck bath on my own.
I have a solution. I am closing my eBay account. Next time I need to sell something, I will use Uncle Henry's or Amazon.com. They haven't failed me yet.
In reading your post, it came across that they have a woefully inadequate tracking system. For a virtual company, you think they would invest in a state of the art information system. Too, they need to spend some time on service scripts, with the appropriate exit strategy mapped out in it. Saying, there are times you handle things, and times you punt and send it to as high of a level of management as necessary to fix the problem.
