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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

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