eBay have revamped the Buyer Purchase History page and designed it to give clearer information to buyers as well as signposting how they can get self-service help.
New eBay Purchase History Page features
Quick links
Right at the top of the page is a banner enabling them to access Unpaid invoices, Orders, Cancelled Items, Cancelled Invoices and Returns and cancelled orders.
Quick tracking
Above each purchased item is a ‘pizza delivery’ style notification slider to inform the buyer when their item has been Paid, Dispatched and Delivered.
More actions
To the right of the item is the normal dropdown of options, but previously this was titled “More Actions” and now it’s a much more helpful “I’d like to…”. It’s here that you can access links for View order details, Contact seller,
Return this item, View PayPal transaction, I didn’t receive it, View seller’s other items, View similar items, Sell this item, Save this seller, and Hide order.
Previously, on the old Purchase History Page, there were only four options – sellers will probably appreciate the addition of View seller’s other items and Save this seller. Sadly the Save this seller links goes to an eBay page that looks like it’s still 1999 which is is a bit of a shock when landing from a sparkly new eBay Purchase History page, but doubtless it will be updated in due course.
Notes
Below the item price and seller details is an ‘Add Note’ tag. I’ve not figured out the purpose of this as it’s not immediately apparent what this is for or who it is aimed at. Clicking the link opens up a box into which you can add your notes with up to 250 characters available. Let’s hope sellers don’t think their notes are being passed to sellers as this may well not be the case. Buyers may also be forgiven if they think that these notes are being passed to eBay support as that also may well not be the case. Frankly I’m confused with the notes feature.
eBay Artificial Intelligence HelpBot
eBay have added an Artificial Intelligence chat bot – eBay HelpBot – which can be accessed from the bottom right of the new eBay Purchase History page.
eBay HelpBot can help you: Track a package; Get a refund; Return something; help if you didn’t get your item; Check the status of refund or return; show recent purchases; and connect you to an eBay representative.
This is interesting for two reasons – firstly it’s hopefully going to divert buyers from contacting sellers as they should be able to access basic information themselves. Generally all the information on if an item has been shipped, what the tracking number is and how to return an item is already on eBay. It’s just that buyers don’t always know how to access it.
Secondly, from a technology perspective we’re starting to see eBay’s investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) appearing in more visible forms. It’s well known that AI is used in multiple ways by eBay to do everything from putting the right products in front of the right buyer at the right time to seller insights on what inventory to stock and suggested selling prices.
eBay HelpBot is similar to eBay ShopBot on Facebook messenger, although in some ways more limited. For instance whilst HelpBot can assist you with existing orders there’s no point telling it what you want to buy and asking it to search eBay for you as that functionality doesn’t appear to be built in although Shopbot is more than happy to help.
Do you like the new eBay Purchase History page?
I quite like the new eBay Purchase History page (with the exception of the notes which I don’t understand). With my buyers hat on it’s cleaner, quicker to locate the information I want and better guidance towards any actions I might want to take.
What do you think of the page – is there something you’d like to see added or changed or do you give it a thumbs up?
(NB As it’s currently in test phase, not everyone will have access to the new eBay Purchase History page yet)
4 Responses
Dear EBAY “A Flash of Insight”
“DBR” Damaged Beyond Repair, The dome is sealed , The future is fixed and it is a future of unending agony and Confusion .
Good luck.
Cordially
Just had a quick look at this. Of my last 42 purchases, its only showing 5 as being delivered, even though all but my last 2 purchases have arrived. Only one item came in the post, everything else was with a courier.
Looks like eBay will have a bit of a fight on their hands with the tracking info……
previously this was titled “More Actions” and now it’s a much more helpful “I’d like to…”.
how is this “much more helpful?”
other than forming the wonderfully illiterate phrase “I’d like to I didn’t receive it”.
to me it illustrates that ebay’s idea of “helpful” is far from any real world definition of “helpful”, meaning something completely different.
focus your time changing the wording of something which is worded perfectly acceptably, form incoherent sentences with your new change, call it helpful.
meanwhile ignore that the links take you to what looks like fakebay, causing concern to customers and decreasing the chances of sales.
are we to believe there are enough dumb people to be convinved by these semantics? more than will be put off by the website looking like a completely different website all of a sudden? I don’t think so.
further re-inforcing this opinion is the fact that, rather than present the necessary information in that place, which is easy to do. ebay decide to spend who knows how many hours packaging it into a (probably useless) AI chatbot.
Yes unnecessary, over-engineered, poorly engineered, confusing solutions to non-problems. that’s what ebay needs more of.
not real working solution to real frustrating problems that have been dogging us for years, that would be too obvious.
Oh great. They’ve just changed the ‘Manage Active Listings’ page too….. Really helps being able to now click on ‘Edit’ rather than ‘Revise’ to change a listing.
Much more obvious now… :/