Ask seller a customized question

by Sue Bailey

This post was written in February 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay.com have just announced a new feature for Ask Seller a Question. Customized Question Subjects allow sellers to add up to nine of their own subject lines to the drop-down menu from which buyers can choose.

I’m really mystified about the point of this, to be honest. The example eBay give is about your returns policy: well, if you’re getting so many questions about your returns policy that you need to create a special question category for it, isn’t the solution really to write a better returns policy on your listings?

Plus the whole feature assumes that buyers carefully select the subject line before ASQing - which in my experience, they don’t.

At best, this is a feature that’s going to encourage more sellers to use autoresponders: whether that’s desirable or not, I leave to individual sellers to decide. At worst, it’s another useless feature designed to cover up the radical overhaul that eBay’s site so desperately needs.

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Author: Sue Bailey
Posted at: Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Filed Under Uncategorized
 

Comments

3 Responses to “Ask seller a customized question”

  1. Jazzy on February 7th, 2007 10:05 am

    Sensible as it may be…(isn’t the solution really to write a better returns policy on your listings?) …would we really find more people reading it…lol

    I do agree though…another useless feature instead of some of the serious changes that are needed.

    x

  2. Uncle Sam on February 7th, 2007 11:54 am

    I think it potentially has its uses (albeit limited ones) such as customising answers to FAQ’s which are particular to a sellers’ specific category (eg ‘which networks does this mobile work on’). The answers to the FAQ can all be found in all my Item Descriptions but that doesn’t stop buyers from asking - as one of them recently put it, “I don’t do reading the description, is this fone (sp) working?”

    However, I was under the impression that such a system was already in place. I seem to recall setting up mine following a Seller Outreach call in October, but typical of me, can’t find it again now…

  3. Uncle Sam on February 7th, 2007 12:07 pm

    Doh! I confused this with the FAQ answers you can choose display when someone ASQ’s you. Now I’ve warmed my brain up & am looking at the right thing, yes it is 100% pointless.

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