Phone customer support - language barrier (German)
Summary: polyphonikk complains about a company's phone support, which is inadequate for specific issues. They had trouble with returning an item from Japan, which was apparently rejected by customs. The seller is uncooperative, and customer service via chat and phone was unable to help because the item is marked as delivered. Another participant, lolly030, suspects that customer service follows standardized procedures and refers to the seller's information. polyphonikk plans to address the issue through PayPal, since the customer support is considered unusable.
I really have to complain about phone support now, because it keeps getting worse. Over the course of a year, I end up needing to use phone support 3–4 times, since the chat assistant is basically useless and the help pages don’t cover the more specific cases.
Current specific case:
Item ordered in Japan (over a month ago), tracking received (Japan Post/DHL).
Article arrived in Germany and then went back to Japan 2 days later, without any action on my part.
According to the tracking number, the item has been stuck at the airport in Japan since 12/07/2026; it’s unclear to me whether and how I can keep tracking the shipment.
I can’t open a “not received” report through the eBay portal.
The seller replies that customs rejected the package (regarding the declaration; it’s the Japanese version of the video game Resident Evil). He wants to wait until he gets the package back and then get in touch. But it’s unclear to me when and whether that will ever happen.
Since I can now neither take action myself (“not received”) and the commercial seller is uncooperative, I contacted customer service by phone.
Despite the preselection in the chat assistant, they asked me for the order number (twice) and tried to guide me twice via the navigation from “My eBay” to “Item not received,” even though I repeatedly made it clear that I was calling precisely because I couldn’t do that.
The call was ended and I was promised help. About 3 minutes later I get a call from the same person, telling me I have to wait until July 28 because the item is still in transit.
Since I have repeatedly had problems being understood substantively, I wonder what it’s going to be like with really expensive purchases gone wrong.
So how do you get native German-speaking agents? Who monitors the quality of the conversations, and how?
polyphonikk
OP2 weeks ago · EditedWell, eBay is making it very easy for themselves here. The shipment is marked as delivered, and no checks are done at all.
The shipment has been back in Japan/with the seller for days. They aren't doing anything. My (really) factual review was deleted instantly, so the next naive person may well run into the same problem.
Now it's going through PayPal, since eBay customer service is simply useless in this case.
lolly030
·2 weeks ago@polyphonikk
Well, at least you got the information afterward. Presumably the CS follows a standard procedure to make sure the user definitely chooses the correct approach. It'll be a call center here, so you probably won't be able to choose a contact person.
They can only respond to the tracking information anyway. You already got the additional information from the seller.
Best regards