eBay rant

12bdebt3

Hi all,

Yesterday I decided to use eBay on my iPhone. It seemed very convenient as all I do is take a picture of the item on my iPhone or scan the barcode then upload it using the same software as is used on the desktop version of eBay. I thought it would be too easy for things to work out like that and I was right.

I cracked my Xbox 360 controller, so automatically decided to list it on eBay. It is still in working order and I added some extras and listed it for bidding to start at £15 and buy now at £30. I put 2 pictures up as well. One to show the crack in the controller.

Anyway, thinking all this would go through fine, I look at my listing and it says; Xbox 360 Controller & extras, starting bid: £15.00, buy now: £30.00. So I decide to press 'list item'. It loads it up very quickly and asks me if I wish to view the listing. I say yes, it decides it wants to tell me it has listed my item at a starting bid of 99p. I thought 'Oh god I've made an error, fair enough I'll cancel and re-list.' So I cancel it and re-list the item. When I re-list the item I triple check everything and even show my girlfriend, then I go to list again and guess what?! Yes it lists it as 99p.

I go to check my billing details and it shows that the bill is 74p, which is 37p for each listing that eBay put incorrectly. Anyway I decided to go through their terms and conditions and couldn't find anything about this. So I looked at costs for listing and for what I wanted to do it was actually 50p. So I re-listed it on my laptop. It was showing the charge would be 50p and I accepted and it went through fine. So I obviously realised this is a fault with the iPhone app.

Me then being furious and hating everything eBay decides to email them. Explaining it similarly to how I've just told all of you but a bit more formal.

Today I then get an email back off eBay saying "We don't normally wipe charges but we will make an exception this one time." Me thinking at this point 'fair enough, they've accepted it's their error and that it's all sorted.' Then the email started to informed me of the fact they had credited my balance and how to go and check it. I go to check it and they had only billed 37p, not the 74p. Not as good as I hoped but at least they accepted the fact they were wrong, I'll email them back to see if they can sort the rest of the bill out. Then I think 'Oh I forgot there is more to the email.' The email then goes on to tell me that I need to make sure I always check the listings before I post them on eBay. :mad:

Sorry I just needed to get it off my chest, it might be for a petty amount of money and it might be over something trivial but the sheer fact somebody from a big company that's in customer services blatantly ignored what I was saying to them and assumed I'm in the wrong or lying about the fact that the iPhone app made the error and not me.

eBay in general is very stressful and I feel sorry for anyone that makes their living from that website. I will still continue to use it because it literally is a niche in the market, there is nothing like it also I have a lot of boxes of things to sell and things on the site can be really cheap. I just find that pretty much every transaction I make through eBay there is some sort of problem, this has been the most irritating one.

So sorry for the massive rant over 34p but it's made me feel better already. :rotfl: