The company everyone loves to hate turned 10 this week. Using any working e-mail address they can link to your credit card or bank account to transfer money simply and easily. They revolutionised the way money is securely wire transferred across the globe. Top e-bay business users hate the percentage rates they charge, but love the instantaneous ability to close transactions and their Excel spreadsheet downloadable record-keeping.
The ever prescient e-bay CEO Meg Whitman saw their potential and in 2002 invested $1.5 billion dollars in e-bay stock to acquire and make this the world’s biggest web micropayments platform on the back of an exclusive deal with eBay and 60 per cent of its turnover derives from this auction marketplace. She smartly kept them at arms-length to avoid any direct financial control or appearance of impropriety since the two company’s financial transactions were so closely related.
The only thing she was unable to bring was e-bay’s focus on community and customer service. The company is never on anyone’s service hit list, except perhaps a Mafia one for service gaffes. People have had accounts wrongly seized or dismissed without real chance of appeal. For years they were known for shooting first and asking if the homicide was justified later… if at all.
The website The Consumerist was so peeved with an inability to reach live people with real complaints that they asked their readers to help. The end result was a 13-page list of direct dial telephone numbers, names and found here for those with a direct complaint to access a live person.
I recently had to send money to my sister from here in the UK. After three attempts over 10-days all wrongly input by various backroom departments at Barclays Bank, I gave up and said open a PayPal account. She did and it was there in a nanosecond and fully in her account after 36-hours.
I received pirated vs. legitimate DVDs that were not labelled from two e-bay sellers. I was enraged and in one case they quickly refunded my money and in the second case they decided there was no claim despite identical claims. There was no way in which to speak to a live person and so it just died.
When it works, it’s great. When it doesn’t it doesn’t.
Now as they approach adolescence, we can all hope they grow up enough to become a customer focused company.
Meg would prefer it, I’m sure.
