A Miracle Occurred Yesterday

A young man name Mark Roberts called me yesterday. On the telephone. From eBay.

I’ve been told I don’t know how many times that this CANNOT HAPPEN.  It is impossible.  eBay is an Internet-based company and doesn’t own any phones.  Go away and send us an email to which we will send a canned, inappropriate and untimely response.

But as we know, I am TENACIOUS.

I dug DEEP.

I found a presentation entitled “Introduction to Trust and Safety” that had the presenter’s name and email address on it and [gasp] I wrote to her to complain about, well, EVERYTHING Trust and Safety has  and hasn’t been doing right.

Want to read it?  Sure you do!

Dear Ms. Talgo

I have just finished reviewing your subject presentation and I must inform you that your Trust and Safety Department is failing utterly to live up to the standards you intend.

Specifically, as required by Slide #4, they have not:

• Focused on enabling a terrific trading platform
  • Do the right thing for buyers
  • Help sellers do the right thing for buyers

In my personal experience, this Department has failed to achieve the goals set forth on Slide #5, especially:

• Improve the overall customer experience
  
• For buyers, this means we are enhancing eBay as a place to get great value and selection from sellers they can trust

My recent (and not fully resolved) experience revolves around Slide #20’s list of “Live Wire” Policies, specifically:

• Any type of fraud

The Trust and Safety Department has repeatedly responded to my reports of fraud, persecution, defamation and abuse of eBay policies and procedures by a specific user with impersonal, pre-prepared, non-responsive and inappropriate replies.

If you are curious, and I hope you would be, to know more about this situation, I urge you to investigate the circumstances surrounding the sale of defective item 220262628059, my PayPal dispute/claim and reversal of charges for “item not as described” granted on my behalf, and the subsequent opening of an eBay dispute by Seller ID “itsyoda” under the Unpaid Item Dispute process claiming payment for the item had never been received.

With absolutely no help to be had from ANY department within eBay Customer Support, I located on my own from within the eBay Help Topics section the following:

Unpaid Item Abuse

eBay policy does not permit members to abuse the Unpaid Item process. Sellers may not file for a Final Value Fee credit on a transaction where the buyer paid for the item.

If a seller filed for a credit on a transaction that was completed, please contact us so we can investigate the situation.

Sellers who falsely report Unpaid Items may be subject to a range of actions, including:

• • Reversal of all credits for the time period in question
  • Loss of the right to use the Final Value Fee Credit system for a period of time
  • Account suspension
  • Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
  • Loss of PowerSeller status

This tidbit of information finally moved the seller to request the dispute be closed, but under false pretenses (i.e., to state the parties agreed to close the dispute based on mutual agreement and that the seller should be awarded a FVF credit, amongst other untruths).  I opted to tell the truth, having never received any or engaged in any communication/discussion with the seller and not being in agreement that I had never paid for the item, and the fraudulent dispute was closed without an Unpaid Item Strike or FVF being issued.  However, this did not negate the fact that a false/fraudulent dispute had been initiated, although eBay Customer Services seemed to be satisfied that the outcome let them off the hook!

Only one person within eBay Trust and Safety ever provided an adequate response and removed one of the seller’s slanderous feedback comments (a comment that she subsequently also left as a reply to my factual feedback comment and which I have yet to have removed).  Every other person FAILED to provide either a reasonable response or take appropriate action.

This has not, as they insisted, simply (so sorry) ”inconvenient” for me.  It was negligence and incompetence of the highest magnitude.  I have, of course, retained all correspondence for review upon request.

I trust that you will give this matter the attention that it merits and turn it over to a managerial level that has the authority to investigate the user and take the parties who failed so miserably to task so that both eBay 2007 Annual Report and your excellent presentation can begin to reflect reality.

As Ms. Talgo’s representative, Mr. Roberts is going to (1) remove the defamatory “reply” the POS made to my completely honest feedback comment and (2) ensure that the POS is investigated for her false dispute under the Unpaid Item process.  Yippee!

It only goes to show that Customer Support should be number one with every business, whether they’re an ignorant woman selling polymer clay supplies on eBay or a mega-conglomerate like eBay itself (are you aware that Ebay also owns PayPal and Skype?).

Am I good or what?  If my rotator cuff wasn’t still bothering me, I’d be clapping myself on the back.