Follow up article to our recent trials with eBay feedback.
Truth, Justice and the eBay Way
By Rusty Goe
By the sound of the shrill exuberant screams resounding from the central desk area in our back office we could tell that something exciting had occurred. You would have thought that we had just been informed that we were the winning bidder on a rare Carson City coin. It was similar to the emotional victory cries heard when your horse wins the Kentucky Derby.
As the message was read out loud from the inbox on Marie's email screen we all knew the reason behind her exhilaration: eBay had wisely decided to remove the unjustified comments left by some misguided malcontent in our Feedback account. You can read the details of this annoying episode in the previous article, "Fiendish Foe Infiltrates Our Feedback Forum on eBay."
Our faith in eBay was temporarily restored and hopes for revamped customer service policies were revived. To be honest, we were skeptical, after reading so many horror stories from other eBayers who received no support from eBay when being harassed by insidious sapheads. The mutual consensus was that the only way negative feedback could possibly be removed was for the victim to pay a minimum $20 fee for dispute resolution. In the rare instances when eBay arbitrarily removed negative feedback without the appellant paying a third party resolution fee, it usually took weeks. We do indeed feel fortunate, our negative feedback was removed within two days after we filed an appeal.
Why did justice prevail in our situation? We have no pat answer for this, although we would like to think that it was a combination of the following:
The accusations lodged against us by such an implausible reprobate were so ludicrous.
Several of our loyal friends and customers petitioned eBay on our behalf.
Our stellar record of excellent customer service and consistent sales volume speaks for itself.
The stars were in alignment and God smiled mercifully upon us.
It could also have something to do with eBay sensing the need to restructure their customer service philosophy and finally taking the thousands of complaints from their members more seriously. After all, they just announced that a new senior vice president, Beth Axelrod, has been placed in their human resources department. Before joining eBay, Ms. Axelrod specialized in employee training and development, performance management, and retention. Her appointment to this top position in eBay's upper management might signal a clue that the world's largest online auctioneer realizes some weakness in its approach to human resources, and views a strengthening within its ranks as not only a way to retain employees, but also to retain customers. After all, well trained, happy employees, usually result in well cared for, happy customers.
In our situation anyway, a wrong was quickly righted and everything was put back the way it should be. Every dark cloud doesn't always have a silver lining, but in this case, we are seeing blue skies once again and eBay is on our positive feedback list.