Do any humans work at eBay?

For the first time in a long time, I wanted to buy a book off of half.com the other day. Now, I had to re-set my eBay password to log in (half.com is an eBay company) and I found out that my account was suspended. The links said that I could pay an outstanding balance or "find out more". I wanted to buy a book, not read a help file, so I clicked on the outstanding balance tag - hey, if it's like the library or Blockbuster video and I really do owe something and didn't know about it - I'll pay up and no harm, no foul - then continue with my original transaction. Only the balance was $0.00! It wouldn't even let me pay $0.00 - I thought maybe that would trigger it to unsuspend my account. Which left me the help file - I skimmed it and none of the reasons even applied to me. They stated that I should have received an e-mail about it. Yeah, whatever. E-mail is not guaranteed delivery and since I rarely use the account who knows when that happened if it did. They suggest contacting them - which leaves me to another online help featured where I pick my own answers - you guessed it - it's the same darn help file I already read which was no help to me at all. Sense some frustration here? A simple transaction for a book which was under $10 used is now taking up more than 10 minutes of my time.

So the next alternative is their live help feature. Sure, I'll quick chat with someone and get this all straightened out pronto. First, the application terminates on me early. Great. Then I finally get in the queue and it says that there are seven people ahead of me and my wait time is approximately 15 minutes! I've already spent nearly that just getting to this point. No way am I waiting for this!

So I dig a little deeper and figure out a way to send an e-mail to their customer service department. I've got to go thru the same darn help file twice, but finally there's a link to send them a real text e-mail via an online form.

A short time later, I get an e-mail reply. It's the text from THAT SAME DARN HELP FILE AGAIN. I'm fuming now. Do they think I'm stupid? As if they keep sending me the same information over and over and over again that I'll finally say "OH, RIGHT - I get it NOW! Sorry it didn't make any sense the first seven times you send me the same text." That's simply insane.

I decide I want no more of this crap ever, and I log into eBay - with my new password - and click on the link to close my account. Guess what - I can't close it if it's suspended and they want me to go back to online help!

Now I'm totally convinced that eBay is the evil empire for taking up so much of my time and giving me the run-around when all I wanted to do was buy a book on half.com. I don't even want to take the time to re-register under another e-mail address I'm so pissed off at this point. I feel bad for the seller, as it's not their fault, but I'm taking my business elsewhere. I fire off a reply to their canned e-mail saying as much.

Back in the day, I used to be a very good half.com seller. Then eBay came in and bought them. That's about the time I got out. I still had the account, but I've got to tell you the last time I bought something off of half.com was last spring. I've never bought anything off of eBay and after this experience, I'm certainly not going to start now.

Several days have passed and I still keep getting the automated canned responses requesting I do the very things I say I have already tried. I keep sending back in all caps CANCEL MY ACCOUNT IMMEDIATELY! What a customer service nightmare!