Unable to use ebay!!!

[penrithtearoom]

Where to start with the nonsense I'm experiencing???

I am English-speaking Canadian. Opened my ebay.ca account years ago in Canada. English is my selected language on ebay. Have spent some time in Hong Kong. Stupidly changed my shipping address to Hong Kong for this period. NOW, when I change my addresses BACK TO THE ORIGINAL CANADA, I cannot do anything on ebay because I get error messages IN CHINESE TEXT saying who knows what because I cannot read them! There is no English option!!!

One message said something about when people change country or something, okay, but at least give me the message in my chosen language, based on the country where I have my account - IT IS ebay.ca!!!. Nowhere did I indicate Chinese as my chosen language, and why the hell does ebay assume that everyone in Hong Kong is CHINESE? The place is full of ex-pats from all over the world who do not speak or read Chinese!!!

So I go to the alleged "Help" section where it says "Phone me". I click on that and what do I get? "Select country" and my options are: Canada, US, Australia or New Zealand!!! Cannot type in Hong Kong, where I happen to be at the time. Even changing my addresses back to my Canadian addresses gives me the same Chinese messages, which I cannot read.

I am now in this limbo of Chinese messages, with ebay seemingly assuming I am a Chinese person who is changing my account to Canada. NO!!!

I cannot relist my unsold items because these Chinese messages pop up telling me to do I don't know what. There is no help in the so-called Help section, I can't even request a phone call to straighten this out.

My frustration with ebay is shooting through the roof. I have wasted so much time trying to deal with this!

FIx this, ebay!!!

[femmefan1946]

I realize it would be a pain in the pi-gu, but have you tried opening a second screen to Google Translate and  painfully having that tell you what each Chinese message is saying?

圣睾丸周二！ -- Hoban Washburne.

[dmil8030]

Hello 'penrithtearoom',

You want to change back to Canada and have the ebay automated messages communicate

with you in English, is that it?

Your ID still says Hong Kong.  Have you changed your address in your ebay account to your

Canadian one?  Are you accessing www.ebay.ca ?

At the top of the page, immediately to the right of the Canadian flag icon is the My eBay page.

Well, it is in English, but if you see Chinese characters, click it anyway.

Then, the Account tab is the third one over, farthest to the right.

Click it.  . . .  What've you got to lose?

On the left side, the second 'bullet' down is for Addresses.  Click that.  Now unless you entered your

name and address in Chinese, it really ought to read exactly as you originally typed it in.

So over on the far right is the option to Change.  The first address is your ebay Registration address,

the second is the Primary shipping address.

There is a 'click link' to the right of each to change them.

If you asked for your password again, great, -- enter it and proceed. 

Even if all the box labels are Chinese, the information you entered should be the same as the day

you typed it in.  Simply click the last line and back space, then retype the changes.

At the end of bottom of the big address box (directly under it) is a button to enter the changes.

"Change registration information" it says in English, but there are only 2 options.  The other is

"Clear form".  Even if you hit the second one by mistake, you can just redo it.

That should successfully change your address to Canada, even if it takes a few minutes for

the ebay computer to update the information.

[dmil8030]

That was addresses.

The change in address ought to give you English language options, but going back to the My eBay

page (found beside the Canadian flag icon), and clicking the third tab for Account,

the third bullet down offers Communication preferences.  Click that.

The top bar reads Communicaton Preferences, with the option to Show all at the far right.

Click it.

The first section is where you entered your email address info so if that has not changed,

best to leave it.

Just below that is the Notification Language options where you can click the circle beside your

Preferred Language.  Are you not offered English as one of the choices?

Once you've clicked English, there is a square button just below the language choices which

is your Save button.  Be sure to click that when you're done.

And of course, here are a couple links to popular 'cut & paste' translation sites:

http://translate.google.ca/

http://www.bing.com/translator/

Hope some of that helps to get you on your way.

Best of luck.

(I must have too much spare time)  

[penrithtearoom]

Hi femmefan1946, yes, it would be a massive pain, besides the fact that google translate is notoriously inaccurate. I have used it frequently with Chinese - English text and usually get nonsense. Plus, I should not have to do that to use ebay! I need to get this fixed so the problem goes away.

I appreciate your interest in helping, though. 🙂

[penrithtearoom]

Thank you, dmil8030, for your efforts. Changing my address was never a problem, as I mentioned I'd changed it "by mistake" to Hong Kong then changed it back to Canada. I am in Hong Kong at this time but my permanent residence is Canada.

My ebay window is laid out differently than yours, so it's a different route to find things. There is no "account" under My eBay at the top menu although it is in another spot. Communications Preferences is all about how I want to receive notifications from eBay. There is nothing about languages. The only mention of language preference is under My Settings, and it is set to English (US) Default, which is the only option.

I am using Firefox browser on a Mac; perhaps this affects window layout, I do not know. Anyway, it's obviously very different from yours.

My account has always been set to English language preference, so that doesn't fix things. I do appreciate your taking the time to reply and offer your suggestions. Very kind of you. 🙂

[penrithtearoom]

Now I understand that the Chinese messages are telling me I have to sign in to eBay China, which is ridiculous. I am a user of ebay.ca, I am English-speaking Canadian, not Chinese.

I am still unable to use eBay, and I would like contact from someone at eBay who can help resolve this issue.

Thank you.

[penrithtearoom]

Does anyone from ebay staff ever read these posts? Or am I just floundering here looking for help that doesn't exist? It is impossible to contact ebay "customer service", so what options do I have?

Does ebay really not give the slightest **bleep** about its members? What a shame! 😞

[pocomocomputing]

This is a member to member forum with occasional eBay popping in.

Send an email to kalvin at ebay.com as he is sometimes helpful in getting the right eBay people to look into this type of issue.

[penrithtearoom]

Thank you for that suggestion, pocomocomputing. I will give it a try! It is really frustrating that ebay makes it nearly impossible to get any help!

[pjcdn2005]

Keep in mind that Kalvin won't be replying on the weekend.  I would imagine that ebay reps are back at work on Monday since it is not a government holiday in the U.S.