The farce of eBay outsourcing.

Back to Jim Weber for a bit.

When the list practices department was first outsourced, one of the statements that was made was that eBay would NEVER outsource important customer issues such as account takeovers & investigations. That changed quite quickly, as the managers came to realize that "Savings" in CS meant more money for them.

After the PRC/Florida fiasco, and after briefly bringing all of List Practices back in house, eBay again went looking for an outsourcing partner.

They chose a company called Sutherland, and a city with a very good base of tech type firms. Or in other words, an existing pool of computer and internet savvy employees.

Well, apparently at the last minute a lease fell through, and rather than wait to find another site in that same city, the decision was made to locate the center in another city 2 hours or more away. A city that was in reality more like a town. A town that had little or no existing pool of even COMPUTER savvy employees.

Interestingly, the mayor of said town later resigned over bribery and misuse of funds allegations.

So, Sutherland opened shop and advertised for employees. The pickings in this town were so slim, that essentially anyone with a pulse was hired.

The first week of eBay training is generally about eBay. How the site works, the history, etc etc. The first week of training for these reps was on how to use a mouse, how to cut and paste text, and what the internet actually was. Can you see where this is going?

Eventually the Sutherland operation got pretty good at basic general support and chat. Mainly because general support and chat are easy things to work at. The List Practices department was a different story.

This department was responsible for reviewing reported listings for all sellers below the Silver Powerseller level. So even if you were a Bronze Powerseller, your listings were being reviewed by these people. They were terrible at their jobs. One of my jobs at eBay was working in the department that answered emails from people who didn't know why their listings were removed. We spent most of our time in that department overturning bad work, apologizing to members, and sending coachings to these reps.

However, despite documenting all the coaching done, the work never improved. Not only that, but even the very worst of reps was never fired. Why? Because eBay didn't have the ability to fire these reps, despite the fact that they were representing eBay.

It was truly a terrible waste of resources, and created an amazing amount of bad will from eBay's members. Yet, it continued on for approximately two years. By that time, I had resigned, partly in frustration over this very issue.

The next destination for List Practices work? Why, the Phillippines of course! eBay had already sent most of the account takeover department and investigations department there already, which again was not very successful. More on that later.