Evil eBay

This has now become a complaint blog, much like all other blogs, instead of the "research" sharing blog I first envisioned. Instead of whining anonymously on another site, like "I HATE EBAY", I'll whine here, because I have a huge readership of two people reading for an average of one minute 29 seconds EVERY SINGLE DAY, according to sitemeter. Those two people can enjoy my rant.

Finally I caved and signed up for eBay. Then I received a piece of junk mail from them, a "promotion": "New Year! New You!" basically enticing me to buy more on eBay with pictures of the wonderful things on offer, every little material thing my heart desires.

I hate junk mail.

It outrageously claimed that I agreed to receive promotional emails from eBay. Hmmm. Don't remember that. When I sign up for anything, I always uncheck the box for "promotional offers". So I scrolled down to the bottom to look for the ubiquitous "unsubscribe" button, and I found this instead:



Sorry it's so tiny... Let me explain what it says, so you don't have to click on it. To unsubscribe, it says: "To change your communication preferences, log in to My eBay and click on eBay Preferences." That's it.

When I followed this directive, I found out there was no "Preferences" tab under My eBay. You need to click on "My eBay", then click on the tab "MY ACCOUNT" *then* you use the pull down menu to pick "Communication Preferences." From there, you scroll down the screen to the bottom and click on the button underlined "Show" under the last heading of "Promotions and Surveys." There you uncheck all of your "Subscriptions" which I still insist I did not subscribe to. Finally, you hit the "Save" button at the bottom right.

Now, this sounds simple because I've explained to you how to do it. Without these instructions, you would be left flailing around on the site looking for the "My Preferences" tab. Exasperation over my wasted time prompted me to waste more time by writing and complaining to eBay (difficult to get past automatic response system there too), then writing on this blog.

Wow. No wonder why they didn't use an "unsubscribe" button. That would have been too easy, compared to the obscure route I had to hunt for.

eBay, I already hate you, and we've only just met.

Can't help imagining a committee of eBay peeps having a meeting discussing how to sneak in an automatic subscription then make it as difficult as possible to unsubscribe from those annoying promotional emails. I don't think CAN-SPAM protects me from these shenanigans... Apparently, they are under no obligation to make it EASY to unsubscribe, only that:

"A visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism is present in all emails" and "Consumer opt-out requests are honored within 10 days." eBay brazenly states that "it may take up to 14 days to process your request." Ha. Ha ha.

The law? It doesn't apply to eBay.

If you enjoyed this, and you probably didn't, why don't you continue torturing yourself by reading Random Rants on the Evil eBay Empire.