JJB Blog

To: eBay

8 April 2006 - 3 comments

hi… i had a draft saved, and it somehow got removed. 30 days have not passed, and i did not begin to create a new listing. [1]can you tell me why this happened? [2]can you restore my previous draft? it was a for a g5 and i made it a week or so ago.

also, i really think that we should have the ability to save as many drafts as we want. of course you have probably considered this feature 5 years ago and decided against it for some reason, but i just thought i would mention it.

thanks!
john

Hello John,

Thank you for writing to eBay. My name is Rey and I understand that you have saved a draft in your account but it was not there when you tried to complete the listing.

John, I have reviewed your account and cannot also find the draft you have saved in your account. I would like to apologize for we cannot duplicate the issue you have experienced and there is no way to recover the draft that was lost from your account. We appreciate your suggestion and I have forwarded your email to our Site Development Team. You may want to start a new listing and immediately submit it after you have finished it.

We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter, and wish you continued success on eBay.

Regards,
Rey F.
eBay Customer Support

Hello John,

Thank you for writing to eBay’s Customer Support. I appreciate the chance to read and understand your suggestion.

The communication we receive from our community members is critical for us to make changes that will keep our site the best. I will forward your message for further consideration by the Product Development Team.

Please note that any comments or materials you have submitted or may submit to us, including questions, technical or creative suggestions or ideas, are considered by us to be non-confidential and non-proprietary. eBay has no obligation of any kind with respect to any such submissions.

Should you have any other questions or concerns please visit our help pages located on our site for instant answers to most questions. You can get to the help section by clicking on Help at the top of most eBay pages.

We are committed to your online trading safety and success.

Have a great day!

Regards,

Helen K.
eBay Customer Support

On 4/9/06, eBay Customer Support wrote:

John, I have reviewed your account and cannot also find the draft you have saved in your account. I would like to apologize for we cannot duplicate the issue you have experienced and there is no way to recover the draft that was lost from your account.

Is there no way to recover the draft, or is it against your policy to recover the draft? I find it a little insulting to be told that there is no way to recover the draft. I am a software engineer and know full well that with big systems such as yours, information is rarely deleted from databases, it is merely flagged as “deleted”, “inactive”, etc.

Which begs the question, why do you have this policy in the first place? I find it very mysterious that there is no way to develop and save drafts. It makes me suspicious that not allowing users to save drafts results in more auctions being posted sooner, so you use this lack of convenience as a stimulant for your business? Or maybe the less carefully put together auctions are more likely to get higher bids? I could make guesses all day.

Not that I really have any reason to believe that either of those guesses are the case — other than the fact that you are not being transparent AT ALL about why you have your absurd (lack of) draft saving tools, and mysterious no-draft-recovery policy.

John

Hello John,

Thank you for writing to eBay. My name is Yul and I appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

I understand your concern regarding draft. I realize the importance of this issue and appreciate your time and effort in addressing your exact concern. I apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

Please understand that if you start to create a new listing in the Sell Your Item form, but you don’t get to finish it, eBay will save it as a draft so that you can easily finish it later.

As you fill out the Sell Your Item form and click the Continue button at the bottom of a page, all the information you’ve entered so far is saved for you on eBay.

When you want to finish the listing, return to eBay and click on Sell at the top of any page. On the Sell page, click on the “Complete Your Listing” link. You can continue from where you left off in the Sell Your Item form.

Your saved draft remains available on eBay for you to complete unless one of the following happens:

1. Over 30 days pass since the last time you edited the draft. After this period, the draft will expire.

2. You start a brand new listing and click Continue on the Title & Description page. This new listing now becomes your saved draft, replacing the previous one. (You can only have one saved draft at a time.)

3. In rare cases, technical difficulties or outages on eBay may cause your saved draft to be erased. Email notifications

Please understand that if you don’t finish a listing, eBay will also send you a reminder email about a week before your saved draft will expire. Newer sellers may receive an additional reminder a few days after your last session working on the draft. These emails will include information about your progress and a Complete Your Listing button that you can click to access your saved draft.

I trust that this information has been useful to you. I appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter, and wish you continued success on eBay.

Regards,

Yul P.
eBay Customer Support

How insulting, that in the 3rd communication I receive from eBay on this matter, the only response I get is a copy-and-paste from the documentation that is already available on the site. Not only that, but you begin the email by thanking me for writing to you, and then introducing yourself with your first name, as if to imply that my issue is getting personal attention.

“I understand your concern regarding draft. I realize the importance of this issue and appreciate your time and effort in addressing your exact concern.”

You are NOT addressing my exact concern in any way. And you do NOT understand the importance of this issue. If you did you would change your policies and/or features.

I realize that you cannot make large feature changes for each customer who complains. But at the very least, don’t insult me by sending me 10 paragraphs of a standard customer service response in the THIRD communication. What is your strategy, to keep sending me a list of the existing rules until I stop responding? You haven’t even attempted a diplomatic answer to my questions from the previous email:

“Is there no way to recover the draft, or is it against your policy to recover the draft?… why do you have this policy in the first place?”

And don’t worry, I won’t threaten to cancel my account, you have a monopoly and I have no other options. Maybe that’s why you can afford to treat your customers so poorly.

John


3 Comments

I am having the exact same problem right now. I am selling a $30,000 car and worked on the Description for a couple hours until I got it prefect. I hit the “Save Draft” button every 20 minutes or so and the Ebay system would then mark down the time it was last saved.
Well guess what..My computer froze and when I restarted and went back into Ebay not a single one of my saved drafts were there!!!! What a waste of time… I should probably just stop using Ebay because there is obviously a reason why they are letting this happen to people and it would be a very underhanded reason for sure.

Posted by Kent Wallace on 6 September 2008 @ 3am

Grace B. has joined this session!
5:02:08 AM SystemSystem
Connected with Grace B.
5:02:18 AM AgentGrace B.
Hello, thanks for waiting and welcome to eBay Live Help! My name is Grace. How may I help you?
5:03:37 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
I am selling a $30,000 car and worked on the Description for a couple hours until I got it prefect. I hit the “Save Draft” button every 20 minutes or so and the Ebay system would then mark down the time it was last saved.
Well guess what..My computer froze and when I restarted and went back into Ebay not a single one of my saved drafts were there!!!! What a waste of time. iS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN DO??????
5:04:59 AM AgentGrace B.
I certainly understand why you are concerned and will certainly look into this for you.
5:05:37 AM AgentGrace B.
Your eBay account can only hold one draft at a time.
5:05:52 AM AgentGrace B.
If you create a new listing the old drafts gets removed.
5:06:22 AM AgentGrace B.
Secondly, in rare cases, technical difficulties may cause your saved draft to be erased.
5:06:27 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
I wouldlove to have any draft at all.
5:06:55 AM AgentGrace B.
So if the draft is not there I’m sorry it cannot be retrieved back, you will, have to create a new one.
5:08:22 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
So in other words…. never use the Save draft option because it doesn;t really save. Good to know…..Ebay might want to put a disclaimer underneath the button or just get rid of it all together.
5:09:49 AM AgentGrace B.
I can certainly understand how important this is to you.
5:10:05 AM AgentGrace B.
However, your saved draft(listing) will remain available on eBay for you to complete unless one of the following happens, over 30 days pass since the last time you edited the draft. After this period, the draft will expire.
5:10:09 AM AgentGrace B.
You start a brand new listing and click Continue on the Title & Description page. This new listing now becomes your saved draft, replacing the previous one. (You can only have one saved draft at a time.)
5:10:09 AM AgentGrace B.
In rare cases, technical difficulties or outages on eBay may cause your saved draft to be erased.
5:10:48 AM AgentGrace B.
As your computer was facing some technical difficulties, it seems that the draft was not getting saved and therefore, it was not there.
5:12:25 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
DID YOU JUST BLAME MY COMPUTER???????? EBAY VARIFIED THE SAVE, IT SAID…AND I QUOTE ” DRAFT SAVED AT 3:32PM” IF MY COMPUTER WASN;T CLICKED THE SAVE DRAFT BUTTON PROPERLY THEN WHY WAS EBAY CONFIRMING IT????????
5:12:47 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
3:32 AM
5:13:32 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
I guess I’m just one of those “rare cases”
5:14:18 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
P.S if you google this problem there are litterallly hundres of other people complaining about these “rare cases”
5:14:56 AM AgentGrace B.
I totally understand what you mean to.
5:16:10 AM AgentGrace B.
Even I’ve come acrossed many members who are not able to find the draft saved on your account. However, we do not erase any of the members draft, the draft is not saved due to some technical difficulties at our end or at the member’s end.
5:16:30 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
Thank you/
5:17:18 AM Customerexecutivesurplus
I hope you don;t mind me posting this conversation on a Blog dedicated to this Ebay Glitch.
5:17:56 AM AgentGrace B.
I can imagine how this must feel and I am sorry that you have to go through this.
5:18:37 AM AgentGrace B.
For your future reference, you can set your notification preferences so that if the draft is getting expired you can receive the email about it.

Posted by Kent Wallace on 6 September 2008 @ 4am

Thanks for sharing your experience Kent.

It’s amazing that two years later, not only do they have the same problem, but they are pasting into their live help chat, the same lines that they emailed me in 2006.

Posted by John on 6 September 2008 @ 12pm

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