ebay survey

I mentioned e-baying yesterday and that reminded me - a few days ago I was sent an e-mail by e-bay asking me to complete an online survey.

I figured what the hell, let's at least take a look and see what it is, so I clicked the link and it turned out to be a survey mainly about selling stuff on e-bay. I therefore decided to complete it.

Little did I know it was going to take absolutely bloody ages.

To be frank, it was a really badly designed survey - you could have easily compressed it to about half the size and still collected all the relevant information.

It was also bloody stupid, asking all sorts of confusing and contradictory questions. At times it actually felt like I was sat in a police interview room and they were asking the same question over-and-over, but in slightly different ways to try to trip me up.

The basic thrust seemed to be about charges - what would you be willing to pay, which system do you find the easiest to use, why do you do what you do - that sort of stuff.

As part of it there was kind of a role-play thing, where the question was something like "if you were selling an item that was worth x pounds what would you do?" And it seemed like it was trying to establish which charging system out of different possibilities you preferred.

This was gigantically flawed.

First off, I don't fundamentally work in tat way - I don't sell items that are "worth x pounds". I mean, I have hopes for what I might get and I have a minimum price I don't want to sell the item for less than (the starting amount) but items I sell don't have a value in the way this was implying.

Second, these values were ludicrous. One was £1,000! I've never sold anything even remotely worth that much on e-bay.

Third, it asked would you sell the item as an auction or as instant sale, as if they were mutually exclusive, but you can easily do both.

You were also supposed to be making your decision based on the fees. I've never based my decision on how to sell on fees. You know why? Because I know whatever I do, e-Bay are going to rip me off.

I mean, that's what they do - their veritable raison d'être, so why would I investigate the fees? It would only leave me depressed and wretched.

Also, I sell 99% of my stuff with auctions, because that's what e-bay is supposed to be about.

Anyway, the net result was that all the survey really did was further convince me that e-Bay wants to get rid of us small, individual users and become a wholesale outlet.

It did give me an opportunity to vent my spleen at them a bit though, as there was a question asking "what one thing e-bay could to encourage you to sell more?" (yet more assumptions - I mean, if I've not got any second hand stuff to sell, how can I sell more?)

I put 4 things. And swore at them quite a bit.

It's like shouting at the moon, of course, but it made me feel a bit better.