by FM Sherman

Created on: February 03, 2009

Get ready. Lock the door, pull down the shades and cover the dog's eyes. I'm going to give you the secret to contacting ebay. No, actually I'm going to give you the secret to contacting a real live person at ebay, which is much, much harder to do.

With knowledge and power comes responsibility. I'm also going to ask that you use it responsibily, like any other powerful tool. Use the regular help system first, it can answer 99% of your questions.

The secret I speak of is ebay live help. You say you've never of such a thing? While you can't get a live human being on the phone, as far as I can tell, you can initiate a live chat with a human, which is better than time lagged waiting for canned email responses sent from a computer. Its a bit tricky as you can't get live help from a menu or the help section, it only can be accessed from a listing. Not just any listing, it seems to only appear on ebay motors and higher priced items. Also it does appear on your own listings, only others.

ebay makes it difficult to contact them because it costs a lot of time / labor to respond to questions or complaints. The automated system is pretty good and gets better all the time. They have computers that try to search the text of your question and provide an automatic answer and I'm sure this helps in most cases. Without this, ebay customer service would be overwhelmed, answering basic how to list item questions, instead of serious detailed inquires or problems that require human participation.

Here's how to beat the system and get the help you deserve. Go to ebay motors and pull up a listing for any random vehicle. At the very top right of the screen is a small icon that says LIVE HELP with a gold question mark. Click on it and away you go. The help is not limited to the item, you can ask about anything. Buying, selling, your account, anything ebay related. Yes, the human being on the other end does occasionally seem to be in some exotic land, but its a person. Also there are multiple departments, so you may start a chat with one person and then be transferred, still via chat, to another department.

I'm a reasonably smart guy who has been selling on ebay since 2000, so if I need help, it means I've already explored all the on-line options. I've had to contact help about listing problems, very rarely, and I've been amazed at the poor quality of the canned responses, allegedly sent by a human. Responses that clearly don't address or answer my question or concern. In the spirit of this poor response from ebay, I share the secret to proper customer service with everyone.

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