24-48+ hours response time for e-mail support - doesn't cut it.

Hi swn - You might want to re-consider displaying your email address as there are bots that scan the internet looking for them for spam, phishing, and other scams.

Hi swn,
ninth_wave is right, do an edit and get rid of your email address. If you are having a specific problem, why not ask here? Maybe one of us can help.

I agree totally with SWN, I've had a request for information in to the 'Help' desk for almost a week. Admittedly it was a long and drawn out situation, in which, 'Help' initially gave me the wrong instructions. Then, as we progressed and I asked for additional information, it was almost as if they got 'bored' with the whole matter and stopped responding to my inquiry and let the 'case' go dormant.

I like this site for many reasons, but 'attention-to-detail' does not appear to be their strong suit, maybe things will change for the better in time.

Russell, that is certainly not my experience with the Support Team, I've always found them to be very responsive. Maybe raise a new query, in case that one has somehow fallen off the radar?

Well if we get 2 complaints in 2 months I can live with that.

Here's how it's run down so far:

Question    Reply      Time to reply
========    ======     =============
3:03pm       3:16pm    13 minutes, 1 second
3:54pm       4:14pm    19 minutes, 8 seconds
4:26pm       4:31pm     5 minutes, 25 seconds
8:16pm       9:15pm    whoops, almost a full hour!
10:27am      3:45pm    4 hours, 18 minutes

Question 12/19 that would require us to teach you HTML to do.   Which there hasn't been a reply to until now.

The last question you asked was basically asking us for step by step instructions on something that is not trivial. It's not a question about our product or how to use it, but would require us to either do the work for you or teach you enough HTML to accomplish that yourself. I realize that you were not likely looking for us to do that had you known the scope of what you were asking when you asked.

What probably happened is every support person opened that case, reviewed it and realized that they'd need to do 30+ minutes of work or more and that still probably wouldn't be enough and would require even more replies and just went on to the next one. I'll discuss what to do in the event a case has moved outside the realm of support with our customer support manager. We'll try to do a better of job of not letting such cases linger and point the customer in the direction that will help them get the work done that they need.

Hopefully my reply in your support case will give you enough info to know to look for more help.

Also doesn't cut it is this down time for site maintenance!!!!! Last week it was done on a monday right before the holidays so wwe couldn't do anything with our holiday listings...edit, add pix, do more listings etc. Now i just put all this work into a VERY DETAILED listing that i started before site went down and when I went to save-poof its gone! Isn't there another site we can use? i have had it with the inconvienance of this site. It may be free -but what it costs me in time to redo disappearing listings-and i am no idiot! My time is too valuable-I'd rather pay the extra $ and post on ebay. I already sent a message that they should have a "save" butto right on page so you can save as you go rather than having to go out and back in...you think i got a response???? NOOOOOOOOOO! I have had it! Sorry for busting in on your blog-but I couldn't fingd anywhere else to vent... even the community setup is confusing! I know I am not the only one who feels this way-I say you go-we all go! This has to STOP! I cannot afford to stay up all night working only to lose my work!Thank Youy for letting me vent...

quote:

Also doesn't cut it is this down time for site maintenance!!!!!

Can you at least complain about that in one of the 10 threads about that? This topic is a complaint about how slow our not our support replies are.

quote:

Now i just put all this work into a VERY DETAILED listing that i started before site went down

We're down every Thursday from 10pm until about 3-4am Friday morning. PST GMT -8. It's been like that for almost 10 years now. If you need a reminder set up an event in Google calendar and it can email you or even text message you however long in advance you tell it to.

quote:

This has to STOP! I cannot afford to stay up all night working only to lose my work!

We had a flashing notice near the top of the screen next to the events area that went up at 8pm that told you we'd be going down at 12am tonight. I'm not sure how much more we could do.

This week because we're so thoughtful we waited until 12:00am to start it because there was a 10 cent listing day. Thus maintenance tonight will run until about 6am PST (GMT -8) Of course now all the customers in the UK and AU will probably scream at us.

Further replies about maintenance in this thread will be deleted in the spirit of staying on topic.

Sorry for the terrible ANGRY FRUSTRATED TYPING! thats another story...spellcheck...

Hey Jeff...Your customer service skills stink... I may be in the wrong place-but after what just happened to me-I tried to find the right place and could not...anger is terrible that way especially when you have a "community set up that you can easily get lost in. Its a shame that because you get to be "anonymous" and not have to face the people who just did a lot of work for nothing, that you get to act smug and condescending. As someone who programs POS systems I know that there are ways you can save within programs and then when the system reboots it collects the data. Probably more magnified with this kind of system-still possible-maybe just beyond your scope. Just a save button for us people who are so busy working on something before site goes down-they don't realize the time! And the fact that there are 10 threads to complain about this on-isn't something I as a CEO would be proud to announce. However-seeing the time...and what you are doing-means you are probably the CEA!

Indepedent comment :-

Anyone who writes a complex or lengthy email via venues like Hotmail or listings on line on any site is asking for trouble - the internet is not stable enough to allow this to happen.

One glitch at a server, router/switcher, time out anywhere on route, ISP or your end and poof, it's gone even changing a browser page on your PC can blow it all away.

Always compose complex listings off line and paste it when composed, otherwise expect the worst.

Customer service here is excellent compared with eBay/PayPal and very good overall whenever I have needed help. And being in the UK it is not very easy to get it 'live' due to time zone differences but then many online regulars will help where they can !!

And rudeness on here is unnecessary

Seconded Choo-Choo.

Bargainbabe, of course he's the CEO, look at his ID, it says 'Auctiva CEO'.

And as you know this maintenance happens, be prepared for it - maintenance has to be done at some time, and it will not please everyone all the time, but Auctiva synch theirs with eBay's (sensibly in my opinion).

I think you may get a better response on this forum if, as Choo suggests, you refrain from rudeness - it's unnecessary, especially when you are getting a FREE service.

I understand it's an annoying thing to lose a lot of work.

Best you can do is copy the description to your clipboard before clicking the save button. Our site is offline and the database is not available during our maintenance, there is no way to save it.

There may be a way for us to detect it's during maintenance and provide some type of warning, but I'm not sure. And we move the times around slightly so I'd have to see if it's something we can do because of that. I'd rather a few people that don't read lose their listings than a whole lot of people get an incorrect warning that their listing might not save.

Really though it's a small problem. Only people that start creating a listing before the server goes offline, then click save after it's offline have a problem. Everyone else can't even start writing a new description because the server is offline. Most of the 10 threads are about even having the maintenance time at all, or the time we do it at, or the day of the week. No matter what we do we'll never make everyone happy, short of not having it at all.

The main thing to remember is to read our flashing boxes at the top of the page. We put them there because they are important. Maybe we can put them next to the save button before maintenance, but honestly that's going to annoy a heck of a lot of people that know to read them compared to a few that don't. I generally err on the side of simplicity when it comes to decisions like this. I don't want to clutter up the site for everyone because of a few.

Here's the reason I'm up at this crazy hour:


That was from a few hours after being born, he's 5 weeks now. Which I can barely believe. It seems more like 5 days. Time flies when you're not getting a lot of sleep.

Hey Jeff, congratulations to you and your wife - just in time for Christmas!

Dear Jeff, First- my Apologies...I have gotten some sleep and looking back at what I wrote -UGH...My Frustration got the better of me...and truly I looked for the proper place to vent-but Impatience took over...We have had a series of Major Financial Problems here- My husband is a Framer in Florida [if that gives you any insight] and the bottom has dropped out in New Home Construction. I have been staying up at times for 2 days straight doing different things for extra income-this one of them. Last night was particularly frustrating because I normally do save my listing in my word program-learned after losing other listings when I first started- but FORGOT! And I forgot about "maintenance" so the one who I was mad at most was ME! You just happened to be the nearest thing to kick... I do appreciate this service especially as I learn even more to use it correctly! That person who wrote last night was a sleep-deprived, stressed out and self pitying fool who I don't particularly like-but comes to visit occasionally. I usually know when to kick her out but didn't notice how bad she was being until this morning! So she's gone -I'm back and I hope you will accept my apology! Your son is beautiful- and a MUCH better reason for not getting any sleep
"Enjoy each moment... for moments become fleeting years before we know, and we are left wondering- Where did all the time I thought I had...Go?" By MED [Something I wrote when my 1st grandchild was born!] Happy New Year, Happy New Baby- Jeff! Cherish it All!
PS-I am only posting here because this is where I offended-so this is where apology should be! I will do a Better job of posting further and nicer comments in proper venues!

Russell, in follow up to your support case not being answered for 7 days I spoke with Mike our customer support manager and he assured me that we don't leave hard cases laying around.

We think the culprit is a rare bug in the support system that somehow sets the status of cases to already being answered even when they haven't got an answer. I'm certain that must have happened here because the support staff answered all questions in the queue several times over the Holidays due to the low volume of support cases. Thus every case that was waiting to be answered had been answered. So they didn't even see your case in the list to answer it. Hopefully this will help us narrow down what causes this. If you ever wait more than 3 days file a new case and just mention you already have a case open. What that does is lets us find your old case and merge it with the new one.

I totally understand your frustration with losing work. I often cut and save my replies here to the boards even before I post knowing that every once in a great while a reply is lost after I hit the post now button and most of my replies aren't 1/10th the work of creating a detailed listing.

To that end I've spent a pile of money on servers, software, and equipment that should allow us to greatly reduce our maintenance time. Several hundred thousand for certain. Once we switch to using that new stuff within the next month or two it should get things back to 2 hours or less from the 6 and even has the possibility of letting us skip weeks or make it even shorter than that.

Anyone that's been on these boards a longer than a year or two knows how much our site and product has improved over that time. We've made tons of improvements to the features of the site and it's become rock solid and fast. The first year after we launched we were in a constant catch up phase on equipment and fixes to the bugs for reliability.

During yesterdays 10 cent listing sale we listed more items than we have on any single day ever. It was the busiest our site has even been and there wasn't even a mention of slowness or problems.

So, I don't want to belabor this, but.....I have wondered if I should make a 2nd request when one isn't answered within say 12 hours.
e.g. I submitted one yesterday about the inability of a buyer to pay through "Pay now" click. No answer yet, but did get one from the forum/board participants here and it was helpful.
Still I'd like a "confirmed" reply, even if it's solved today. Any response would be good. I didn't even get a ticket reply.....
I have good luck with ebay chat support, but forget the other....took a week one time.

I have another question....are/is support here and forum/board management employees or volunteers or both?

Oh, Oh, CEO Jeff congratulations.......I love babies. You are sooo forunate to have such a sweet bundle.
Best Wishes for a full and happy life

Hi N, I don't think support are active outside week day office hours except when CEO Jeff pops in.

So late at night US time you may get a US night owl answer on a baord, later than that a UK person like Pete or I.

My first resort is to these boards or Auctiva support when it is something only they can deal with like account related problems where they need to access your account from a supervisory role, or site issues.

Auctiva employees have Auctiva in their username the rest of us are users who like to discuss, debate, generally help out others and learn while we do so or have a friendly chat in the lounge

We have a full support staff on weekends. Pretty much 24/7. Our best guys though work Sunday->Friday. The more senior support people typically answer checkout questions and they aren't on Saturday.

quote:

Here's how it's run down so far:


Question Reply Time to reply
======== ====== =============
3:03pm 3:16pm 13 minutes, 1 second
3:54pm 4:14pm 19 minutes, 8 seconds
4:26pm 4:31pm 5 minutes, 25 seconds
8:16pm 9:15pm whoops, almost a full hour!
10:27am 3:45pm 4 hours, 18 minutes

Well thats just when the auto-responder answers. NOT the TECH.

LOL, no way is that the auto-responder. That's instant.

I filed a support request a few days ago, and I got the auto response ticket confirmation. 3 minutes later (yes that's THREE minutes) my question was answered by the support staff. That's service.

I'm still waiting on a question I put in over 4 days ago.

We did answer the only support case I could find of yours on 1/13 in 7 minutes.

I don't see any other cases for either of the 2 email addresses you use with us. Nor was it with your eBay userId message board userId, or Auctiva userId. I can only try searching like 5 ways before I give up.

Can you provide the support case # for that case?

It was a case with Michael Gomez . No case number - just email exchange.

I responded to his response to me on the 5th at 11:01pm.

[edited: contents of the support case email removed]

quote:

No case number - just email exchange.

My suggestion would be to file a support case and not do it via email. When someone sends an email to 1 person what if he:

1.) gets sick
2.) goes on vacation
3.) quits
4.) ignores you
5.) doesn't work weekends

Only person sees it and works on it. etc.

I've given explicit instructions that email support be done last and only after all other methods. It probably took until today to get to it.

If they get sick, I would presume you have someone covering their work.

Same if they go on vacation.

Same if they Quit. I would imagine you woud have their email auto forwarded to the worker who is taking over the cases.

If they ignore me - I would hope they would be fired.

I didn't send it on a weekend, so that is a moot point.

The topic IS about "EMAIL SUPPORT"

We could call...if we had a number. Is there one?

quote:

The topic IS about "EMAIL SUPPORT"

You'll note the email address is their individual email. Thus they are not sent to any other support person in any of the cases I mentioned. You are mailing a single employee, not the support department. Which is why you waited. How did you find an email address to email? There should not be any email addresses for support on our site. Which would leave only the possibility of typing it in randomly hoping it gets to where you'd want it.

We don't provide email support. They aren't supposed to reply to you via email, they are supposed to create a support case out of it and reply to the support case.

If you are eligible for phone or live chat support those options would appear for you when signed in to the site.