eBay’s System Status Board is currently showing a service disruption with its Sign-in functionality. Going to the eBay Technical Issues board didn’t show any reports (perhaps because people couldn’t sign in to leave a report?), but it also revealed numerous reports of a different issue sellers are experiencing.
The first page of the Tech Issues board features many threads from sellers who report they’re unable to send invoices to customers.
One seller explained they wanted to send a shipping discount to a customer and had been trying to send an invoice since last night, but they keep getting a red box error message at the top of the screen.
On another thread, a seller explained they had two buyer who requested invoices but they can’t generate them – “waiting for eBay to notice this and fix this,” they wrote. Another seller replied that their buyers were getting angry with them over the problem; “Please fix this ASAP!!!” the seller wrote.
This is a chronic problem; in addition to the numerous threads about the problem created in the past 2 days, a seller responded to a thread started in February.
But a response from a moderator indicates eBay does not see the problem as a glitch, but rather as a usability issue for a feature that is working as it intended. The eBay moderator wrote in a response to a seller today:
“I did a little research and I see the tech team noted this on a recent ticket:
“The items sellers are reporting are considered “Autopay” which prevents an invoice being sent.
“Autopay would be considered something like Immediate payment being required in listings. So for auctions, that would come into play if the seller used the ‘Require immediate payment when buyer uses the Buy It Now’ feature. It sounds like they are looking to find a way to improve the member experience though, so that’s good to see.
“A quick call out I want to make if sellers aren’t requiring immediate payment, is to double check their shipping preferences to ensure they’ve checked the box to, “Allow buyers to send one combined payment for all items purchased”. “
A seller responded, “Then eBay needs to fix the autopay problem so our customers can immediately pay their combined invoice. I’ve been complaining about this for seems like at least a year.”
Another seller pointed out the numerous reports that had come in just in the past 2 days alone. “There are too many new reports in the last 24 hours to dismiss straight off the bat without checking to see if something may have gone awry or changed systematically,” the seller said.
We had a customer recently who wanted to buy a quantity (20) of an item, something we don’t usually have occur. The buyer came to an agreement with us, added the items to his cart and clicked on “Request Total from Seller”, and we discovered we couldn’t discount anything but shipping – which wasn’t enough to accomplish the desired discount.
So we called eBay and found after 2-1/2 hours on the phone that they are totally clueless about how their own system works – or doesn’t, in this case.
And setting up a discount in the listing is fine if you’re selling no more than 3 of an item. When we suggested eBay change their “Send Invoice” seller response, there seemed to be a lot of confusion about WHY, HOW and “who needs that kind of thing?”
So “usability” in eBay’s dictionary means “It’s doing what we want”, rather than “does it make it more likely that people will buy things?”. No wonder eBay isn’t growing!
All they need to do is define all these glitches and bugs as “features”, and we’re all set!