DARK DAYS

It's been an odd day in several ways, a rather dark skied early December, the sun shone for a brief while but then the clouds gathered and all became rather murky and dank.

A few days ago I had a problem with eBay, an old account that I've not used for a while, refused to respond when I wanted to bid for something, and so I spent ages on the phone.

The irony is that I wanted to bid for ... a new phone, to replace my old one which had been knocked off it's table and was no longer working. It held 150 phone numbers, a useful piece of equipment that I've had for twelve years. There were several on eBay and I wanted to place a bid. But ... after years of not "shopping online" I had forgotten the relevant details. I spent over an hour on my current phone trying to rectify the situation ...

I went through the automated menu several times before I got to speak to a human being.

After going through several attempts to confirm my details, he basically failed and then asked me to hold the line whilst passing me on to another operative. I waited and waited. listening in the meantime to the rather annoying tinny music that was regularly interrupted with a recorded voice that states how important us customers are to the company. The "We will ring you back" option they offered didn't materialise. Ho-hum!

The second operative after several attempts to help me, also failed to resolve the problem.

I gave up and with only hours to go to bid for what I wanted contacted a friend to bid for me. Then rather to my amusement I got an email from eBay asking me to fill in an on-line form asking me if I had been happy with the service provided by customer support!

Meanwhile my friend had failed to secure the bid, because he was working and unable to keep track of what was happening in the world of virtual reality auctioneering.

I have filled in the on-line form which ... would not let me submit it until I had ticked every single box of rather inane questions, but it did give me a chance to actually type words!

I have stated in quite politely written but strong terms as to why I am not happy with a service that, despite human operatives  during an hour on the phone (at my expense) could not resolve the problem and I am still unable yo use my eBay account. Unsurprisingly I have still not had a response, I get the impression that despite their automated voice telling me ... "Your custom is important to us." they actually don't really care at all. Probably because I am not a regular buyer and therefore they are not making money out of me and after the experience of the last few days they won't get my custom again.

Anyway ... as the photographs show it was a rather dark end to the daylight of the day.