Internet Auction Blog

HOLY HELL.

First of all, I was duped into the stupid .10 cent “sale” for store owners. Supposedly the deal was for July 27th and 28th to allow store subscribers to list auctions with ANY starting price, for only 10 cents per auction.

So I used the “Bulk” feature to send a TON of my items from “fixed price” to “auction.”

eBay FROZE halfway through the process and went no further. I had no option but to refresh the page.

I then go to check my auctions, and I see that it successfully ended all of my Fixed Price listings as it was supposed to, and sent a PORTION of them to online auctions…but there was a problem…THE AUCTIONS WERE ALL SCREWED UP. Some of the titles had been switched, for example, I had listed a vintage hardback book and another item was an autographed football. Now, my description and photos for the BOOK are listed with the title of the AUTOGRAPHED FOOTBALL, and the FOOTBALL description and photos have the title of the BOOK.

WHAT. THE. HELL. This is how it is with ALL of the items I tried to move to auction today.

Sooo… I phone eBay. Hard enough finding a phone number. I’m a powerseller (not to mention, a shareholder), aren’t I supposed to have some kind of easy access? Yeah right. Wait on the phone for awhile, talk to some guy who provides NO HELP. I told him clearly, all you need to do is END the damn auctions I listed today. He says it is impossible for them to do that.

WHAT? Since when is it impossible for eBay to end auctions? They do it EVERY DAY. So this guy was no help at all, in fact he pretty much tells me I can take my stuff to another auction site after I threaten to do so.

Then I have to leave for an appt so I need to get off the phone. I call later when I get home (like 5 minutes ago), and talk to another guy, he puts me on hold several times, I can tell he’s going to be no help, he tells me to use the “Bulk End” item command.

Sure, I try that. What happens then? I get this STUPID message:

Edit Listings: Review Alerts

The editing feature is not available for some of your listings.

These listings cannot be edited, because of following restrictions: This feature cannot be used with this item because it is not a Fixed Price Format item.

eBay, ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?

So I immediately call eBay back to let them now about not being able to even END my auctions. Like I said, I JUST got off the phone with them minutes ago. This time, THEY ARE CLOSED and have a stupid automated message telling me to call back during office hours.

DURING OFFICE HOURS? WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS 24/7 NONSENSE? (see pic below)

Oh Ok, so maybe I’ll try the CHAT feature.I’m #11 in queue, and estimated wait time is 51 minutes. That’s right, FIFTY ONE MINUTES TO WAIT…and it says I need to be ready to ask my question as soon as an available Live Help Agent comes on.

Damn you, eBay, Damn you. You owe me a refund for the auctions you’ve screwed up, and you owe me compensation for my troubles you have caused. I didn’t want to post this message, I’m a shareholder, but if I’m done typing it before a “Live Help Agent” comes on my chat box, I will be sending this message to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Posterous, My own personal blogs, and via email to every contact I know.

…I’ll feel like pulling my hair out. For the last several days, whenever I try to list something, I get the following pain-in-the-neck error message for no reason (click the image for a larger view):

Basically, when I click “Continue” to go to the “Submit your item” page, it tells me “You can not submit your listing due to the following problems: An error has occurred. Please enter a valid value.” It then wants me to go specify a return policy, which I had ALREADY DONE.

So it is very annoying because it LOSES my description that I spent time typing!! eBay is wasting my time!! Every listing, I end up having to go back and do my description twice. GET IT FIXED, EBAY! I’ve already tried deleting my cookies and everything else. The problem is obviously on eBay’s end, as usual.

“Elefy is a new search-driven marketplace dedicated to improving buying and selling on the web. We built Elefy to give independent sellers like you a better showcase for your items and to give buyers an easy way to find just what they want. Buyers will be able to find your items through services like Google search results as well as directly on Elefy.

Later this year, you’ll have the option to list items directly to Elefy from your Auctiva account and we are designing that new functionality to be as simple and straight-forward as possible.

You can take a peek at Elefy.com now but keep in mind that it will be changing quite a bit. The team is hard at work on key features such as multi-seller/multi-item checkout, item pages, seller profiles, item and order management and some design improvements too. We would love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have. Join the discussion.”

Please quit making these default when I list my items on your site. It really pisses me off. I do NOT want your damn “Picture Pack” or “Gallery Plus” automatically going on my listings. I do not care if they are free features right now. I do not want them. They may be free now, but I’m sure you will start charging some ridiculous amount for them in the future, and I’ll have to revise all of my listings.

Did I already say I don’t want your “Picture Pack?” Quit making it default.

and is also the same person that I posted about here, formerly known as “noexcusebuyer“. He/she/it has changed her username and “About Me” page, but it is still the same delusional moron, as you can see by checking the ID History.

Just might want to make sure you have it on your blocked bidder list.

WOW @ the ridiculous amount of “sponsored links” on EBAY search result pages. EBAY is taking money away from most sellers that way, as novice/casual buyers on EBAY will not ever see how to get to page two of the search results.

I just looked at one of my completed listings, which I started as a “fixed price” 30-day listing, with Free Shipping. Now I go look at the completed auction and it is full of external links to other peoples stuff for sale.

Not cool, eBay. You are supposed to be helping us sell our OWN stuff, I still have other items on auction, but yet my completed listings have a huge box for “Check out similar items from all eBay sellers” and then below that another huge box of “Sponsored links” that take youaway from the eBay site entirely.

Then, under all that, is a huge box saying “Find more items from the same seller. Bid or Buy Now!”

Thanks eBay, that is lame.

Well, maybe I spoke too soon with my previous posts about Gozbay.com, as they are now back online, and will hopefully be here to stay. Here is a copy of the eMail I received from them.

Hello Everyone,

Great News! Very much has happened with GozBay since November 2008. We realized that scalability was an issue as our server was experiencing millions of hits and our site was dramatically growing. I’ve had a variety of people and companies approach me with resources and now I’m confident we have an outstanding management team that is ready to take on anything.

Shortly after we took the site down, the owner of a successful IT company contacted me about GozBay. We have put an exceptional team together capable of providing the security, scalability and resources required to make GozBay a successful auction website. This team consists of security experts and IT professionals, Attorneys, and expert programmers along with me. Each of these key people has a stake in GozBay and together we have been re-building GozBay and have released an extremely aggressive new GozBay.com. Our #1 goal and our attention will be directed towards site stability and usability, after which we will focus on design and feature requests. Rest assured we have the resources and capability to grow this site into a successful auction website which meets your needs.

We publicly went live with GozBay on June 1st of 2009,and would like to welcome everyone to chat in the new GozBay forum at http://gozbay.com/community/. If you have anything that you would like to see in the new GozBay please make a post in the forum, using the same username and password that you use on GozBay. If you have forgotten either of these please point your browser to http://gozbay.com/retrieve_password.php to retrieve your info.

We want you to know that even though this is a new site, we still have all of your information that you entered when you signed up for GozBay and if you were one of the first 2000 VIP users you will still have no fees for life. Your grass roots marketing effort is what made GozBay successful and our success is your success, as all of us build this into a powerhouse site.

There are many new features that you will have an opportunity to explore as soon as you log into GozBay. An important one, which we highly recommend using, is the ability to start your auctions on the first bid rather than when you list the item. When this feature is enabled your auctions will be live but the auction duration will not be active until the first bid is placed. This will ensure that your auctions will not end without any bids. We have additional features and functions that will come online over the next few weeks.

As a parting note, the site name may change in the next few weeks. Although our lawyers are confident we don’t have an issue with the current name, we are going to play it safe and change names. We have registered a few domain names and are in the process of choosing the one we want to go public with. We will announce the change before it occurs and the existing urls will redirect accordingly for a period of time. Thanks for your support and understanding.

I am fully aware that you may have moved on but I hope that everyone will try out the all new GozBay.com. If you have any questions please either post in the forum or feel free to contact us.

Thanks for your support,

Zach

I really want to see the website succeed, although it will be nearly impossible. Check ‘em out at www.Gozbay.com.