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EBAY NONEXISTENT CUSTOMER SERVICE NUMBER

Has anyone tried to contact eBay customer service? They seem only to have robots doing all of that now. There is no way of talking to a human being from eBay. I know I have bought items that a seller has discounted, but eBay will not let you combine shipping because the seller has discounted the item. It means contacting the seller asking if they do a discount (all have that I contacted), paying the full shipping price, and then having the seller refund a portion. It is an absurd merry-go-round utterly pointless.

I wanted to try my luck selling some local postcards I collected but had duplicates. That worked fine until I got an offer from a buyer. It was less than I wanted, but I was willing to sell. So, I clicked on respond to the buyer. I clicked "Accept Offer," and the site buffered. I came right back to that button page. It did nothing. I contacted the buyer and told him all I could do was end the listing and relist with his price.

Ebay has never cared about fake autographs, but always before. They did have a way of contacting them. I tried looking for a customer service email. I was astonished that a company as large as eBay is not required to have at least a way to handle complaints.

Has anyone been able to contact a human being at eBay recently?

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Permalink Reply by Findbooks on March 25, 2024 at 9:25am

Hi,

I no longer bother listing on ebay, it is a hopeless platform for sellers and it cuts no ice if you are a business seller btw.

I did figure out a couple of ways of extracting a response from actual human beings and the easiest one is to file a complaint. So try to navigate to the place where you can actually report an issue in writing. E.G. "listing violations" is a good one. I just used those forms to communicate my problem and always got a timely response and they didn't seem to care that my issue was completely off-topic.

That thing about sellers not being able to adjust shipping is a real thing - happened to me recently (I still "shop" there occasionally). Bought 3 items from same seller all of which would ship at the same price as one item and the seller just could not adjust the rates at his end and all he could do was to offer a refund (of the postage costs) via Paypal which was how it was resolved.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Paul on March 25, 2024 at 12:32pm

Findbooks, thank you very much. I just thought it would be a quick and easy way of downsizing some of my postcard collection. The sellers I bought from were all honest and refunded partial shipping. I bought 9 items from the one seller for a total of $88.03 the shipping was $41.79! I contacted him and he said he had tried to get eBay to do something many times but could not get a response. So, he did like you said gave a partial refund. I feel bad for the sellers because it is a headache. I am sure some lose customers because they do not write to ask about partial refunds. Ebay is huge corporation but in my humble opinion they stink when it comes to actually caring about either buyer or sellers.

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Permalink Reply by meggs on March 25, 2024 at 2:14pm

By being the first one in fleabay had a chance to dominate their marketplace for many years but greed and poor management has cost them dearly. It still has the most eyeballs for collectibles and some other items, but other venues have eclipsed them in many areas.

Fleabay is far from user friendly, but there is another workaround rather than refunding if a seller is willing. I'll use a simple example. Let's say you want to buy 2 autographed photos that are both $20 each with a $6 shipping charge. If you purchase the items as they are listed fleabay will automatically add $6 to each item. Now the seller is willing to combine shipping. For the sake of argument let's just say he's willing to send both for $6 shipping since that second photo isn't going to add much weight. What you do is put both items in your watchlist. Then since it's in your watchlist he can send you an offer for $17.00 on each photo. The $3 deduction on each photo then cancels out that extra $6 shipping charge on the second photo that the seller is willing to waive.

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Permalink Reply by 0800Autocollect on March 25, 2024 at 3:39pm

Why would the seller agree to this as it they will lose 3 dollars? They would just wait for someone else to buy the item who isn't bothered by the delivery cost.

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Permalink Reply by meggs on March 25, 2024 at 6:55pm

I don't think you understand. You're not losing three dollars. I used no additional shipping cost as an example, but if the seller wanted to they could add another dollar or two which would more than cover that maybe an ounce more at most the second picture adds to the shipment. The $3 off on each picture represents the savings the seller can pass along because they are getting paid that $6 shipping twice even though they can ship both in the same package for the same or very little more than just shipping one. If the seller wants a dollar extra to ship that second picture, then he would make each photo offer to the buyer $2.50 off.

No fleabay seller with any sense is using shipping as a profit center. If anything, a lot of sellers are negative with shipping because the fees charged by the host on shipping charges are just the same as the item itself. Buyers get ticked off when they think sellers are overcharging on shipping and will rate your shipping charges at less than 5 stars. When you get under a certain parameter with your shipping cost rating, the fleabay algorithms will slam your rear end.

The seller is making the same profit they would if they sold each item to two separate people. But now that seller has the second sale in hand, no waiting for a second buyer, and only has the work of packaging once instead of twice. Win.

Does that make sense?