Creative Compulsion

I’ve never been an eBay basher nor a cheerleader. I use them and so far it’s worked for me. End of story. NOW I’m getting pissed.

My frustration started a few days ago. When I attempted to send some store listings to core I was greeted with this message:

These listings cannot be edited, because of following restrictions:
Item #1100XXXXXXXX - XXXXXXX

* The Item Specifics of the above item have been updated. You may want to review the listing before relisting or remove it from the list of items to be relisted.

Please do one of the following:
* To edit different listings, click the Back button.

Uh, wrong. First of all, I’m not trying to edit anything and second, I haven’t changed any item specifics. I popped on the eBay Technical Issues forum and sure enough, its a “known” issue. Yesterday, Ina Steiner wrote about it in this article on AuctionBytes. eBay seems to be well aware of the issue and as of today has done nothing to resolve it.

Second, feedback appears to broken now. A few days ago, I read a post on one of the eBay boards that people were having trouble leaving feedback. Up until this point I hadn’t had any problems, but today, I went to leave feedback and was greeted with an error message telling me I had already left feedback for the item. Uh no. Wrong again.

I really didn’t freak out last summer over the raising of store fees. I adjusted my pricing to accommodate the higher fees and it really hasn’t affected me too much. What DOES piss me off is the higher fees in relation to the value of the service. Store items don’t appear in normal search so store owners have to rely on core items to draw traffic to the store. Not a big deal, but it IS a big deal when you can’t send items to core without going through several additional steps. Time is money eBay, and you’re wasting mine.

The feedback isn’t as huge a concern for me. I don’t sell on eBay for feedback, I sell to make money. I really don’t care if I receive it or not. HowEVER, its only a matter of time before I get a 10 feedback numpty that sends me a dozen emails a day asking “Where is my feedback, where is my feedback, where is my feedback?”. Guarantee it. Again, annoying and a complete waste of time.

eBay - you need to start providing more VALUE for the amount you charge! It seems like my eBay bill continues to go up each month while the usability of the site goes down and the glitches steadily rise in number. What the hell am I paying for?

Time to go work on MY websites….