I think I was probably about the only person ever to use Skype buttons on eBay listings, which gave buyers and sellers an alternative way of communicating. However as the feature was used by so few sellers .
If you’re using the new View Item page the links for Skype are already missing. eBay do however say that they “appreciate your continued commitment to good communications with your customers”.
Skype has been a missed opportunity for eBay from start to finish but the one thing it was useful for was the occasional buyer who had a pre or post sales question. I have to be honest and say it was very rarely used by my buyers but when it was it has secured me a few sales more quickly and easily than by relying on email alone.
I’ve long thought that eBay and PayPal should have a unified logon – if you open an eBay account you automatically open a PayPal account, and it would have made a lot of sense to automatically get a Skype account set up using your eBay log in credentials.
That’s too late now though, and doubtless eBay will want to unravel the few remaining Skype/eBay integrations prior to selling the company off as a separate entity.
7 Responses
Quite simply Skype is way over the heads of too many ebay shoppers. I’m trying to drive a local customer to use my ebay store only to be roadblocked because she can’t remember her password at sign-in (Hello?- why not try clicking I Forgot My Password).
Oh heck Jeff, luckily I get VERY few of them by virtue of selling in tech categories. If someone wants to buy my stuff they can almost certainly already use a computer 🙂
My sympathies though, be gentle with them 😀
Sadly the customer in question is employed as a Postmaster. 🙂 I’d wager she still thinks in terms of money orders.
You’re right – it’s hard to think that Ebay could have done a worse job at integrating the services. For a long time they made it hard to add to listings, and never really encouraged it.
Luckily for them the Skype survived with a separate identity in spite of Ebay so they should be able to extract some value.
Personally, I’ve had just one call taking less than a minute saving any number of messages exchanged.
Maybe the real cause of the failure was Ebay fright about enhancing the site’s community sense (a core value it doesn’t value enough).
Tim
I don’t like the idea of Skype any more than the idea of mobile phones. I rarely even switch my mobile on, and I never have the sound on on my PC. It’s simply not convenient for many people to have to answer something*now*. Email means I can deal with things when I get home from work, or finish whatever I am doing.
#1 why would you want a local customer to use ebay ? In fact why would you want any customer to use ebay ? Such customers should be directed to your own website, or if you don’t have a website be encouraged to do the transaction face to face or by old fashioned mail.
I can’t see why anyone would loose approx 10-20% of the transaction value voluntarily.
I have had customers use the skype chat – its a real missed opportunity
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