eBay Reviews in Canada

Pros

Great work atmosphere, wonderful and talented people

Cons

Company began outsourcing local workforce to save costs, lowered quality of service provided to members

Pros

Intense, dynamic, rapid change and a focus on working hard/playing harder. Lots of employee engagement functions. Recognition for a job well done.

Cons

Regional restrictions on opportunties. Internal politics sometimes get in the way of getting the job done. Top heavy with Directors.

Advice to Senior Management

Look carefully at some of the existing managers/employees. Tenure is not a great measure of effectiveness.

Pros

Dynamic, changing and intense teamwork. Lots of employee events after work and on weekends. Reasonable raises for a few. Management open to suggestions and having employees create project plans and deliver. 4x10hour shifts generally available for a 4 day work week. RRSP 4%. Stock options or RSU's for additional bonus. Profit sharing ~6% for most, at least in the earlier years.

Cons

Metrics are a hurdle for some. Quality constantly measured and evaluated.. fair but invasive at times. International coverage requires some pretty strange shifts. 4am-12 noon. 6pm-2am. 10pm-6am. Ongoing challenge from other employees to retain your preferred shift days off/times and risk getting bumped to an confused work schedule. Especially true when parents are forced into working graveyards or 4am shifts.

Advice to Senior Management

Outsourcing appears to have helped the company slide through rough times, but has likely hurt the company as a whole. Tenure is not a great measure of effectiveness. Look carefully at some of the existing managers/employees.

Pros

- People there are nice, friendly and young.
- Fun and relaxed environment to be in.
- Free drinks!
- Pay is decent for the type of work that you do.
- Great inside look of people wanting to buy or sell on eBay

Cons

- Hours are not set, shift work.
- May get very busy at times handling multiple customers.
- No free parking on premise

Advice to Senior Management

Employees need more feedback in regards to how well they are doing. Need more room for advancements within the company.

Pros

Great social events, all the coffee, tea, soda you can drink, fitness gym, fun contests, prizes, great people. Fun environment due to the casual setting. You can decorate your desk and show your personality. Charities are an important part of eBay's value.

Cons

Surprise laid off announcement. Depends on which department, there may be politics. Work can be very repetitive. Due to many internal information, it can be frustrating to explain why certain things is the way it is to the customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't be a Nazi, sometimes being nice and trusting goes a long way.

Pros

The people at eBay were amazing, they made it fun to come in to work. Most times members would be very grateful for the support which made it easier to deal with the angry members. Agents were always eager to learn and in turn I learned a lot from them.

Cons

Members can be very mean spirited and difficult to deal with. There are some people who worked harder than others meaning that sometimes you would have to pick up their slack.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop outsourcing. I've had many interactions with outsourcing partners and in large part they are not fun to deal with - I can only imagine what members experiences are.

Pros

great benefits
wonderful people
challenging work
excellent opportunity for advancement and growth

Cons

vision was not as clear as it could be, no direction
communication of decisions was poor

Advice to Senior Management

more clarity. get back to basics

Pros

- Great benefits
- Excellent lower level supervisors
- Tools that make it easier to help customers quickly
- Work-life balance

Cons

- Unclear directions
- Too many changes for members on the site
- Misleading promotions
- Upper management does not often ask employees who deal with their customers on a regular basis what main issues on the site are
- Too much outsourcing (while there are some excellent reps in other countries, there are numerous problems with outsourcing phone support. Many members are not able to understand outsourcers or do not feel their concerns are understood by outsourcers)

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more attention to the issues that are affecting members on the site by asking employees on the front lines. Do more to educate members on changes to the site and use less fine print.

Pros

Best reasons to work for eBay (note vancouver center is currently closing) would be the benefits and pay. It's good compared to other places in the lower mainland. I can't speak for the other customer support centers; however, and those would be the only ones now hiring people.
There was a good amount for medical and dental as well as vision which is always good for a job you're likely to use your eyes a lot on computers. They also provided ergo equipment if you felt you needed it at all and ergo evaluations which are nice to have.

Cons

About 2 years ago it was great working at eBay. Then things started to change...
Biggest issue was outsourcing a lot of work (make no mistake the outsourcers caused issues for employees as much as they did customers with the bad work they do.) You'd have to fix stuff that outsourcers messed up or take the hit on your stats for a customer you're now dealing with after a outsourcer on your satisfaction scores because they aren't going to be happy when a outsourcer sent them to the wrong department.
The company started changing tools used around which made things more difficult for the employees.... course it's what they said would be easier to use and make work quicker (not) and how they said we could work better. The 'they' was always people whom at best watched a couple of people whom actually work then go on and decide how they figured it could be done... never mind that if they'd ever done the csr's job they were designing tools for it was long long ago. When I left it was said that they were going to switch to another tool.... again... however they were still making people switch from a tool that worked and didn't break down a lot to one that did on other queues in the meantime which seems rather pointless...
Meetings to find out what's going on with the company and visits from managers to the various teams to touch base dropped off till many teams hardly ever saw management above their supervisors and leads and center wide meetings in the end were at best twice a year (by the time the center closes it's quite possible it will have been nearly a year with no center wide meeting). Even email communication dropped a lot. We were hearing more via rumor than anything else when I left and were low on leadership. One team couldn't seem to hold onto leadership though it was a shift that typically wasn't popular still that says a lot. Most of the people in the fraud department were looking elsewhere for work slowly the better people tending to be the ones to go first as with many places when they start to see there may be more trouble as was many of leadership.
John donahue is seen as pretty much a joke with many calling him Dohn Jonahue due to the fact that the company seems to have slid downwards ever since he started to be in charge.
There are some great supervisors however the level above that no longer seems to care. At the manager level it may not be completely their fault... they got rid of a lot of managers and added more duties to other managers over the last while which means they've been given more to do than is possible to get done.
Rewards for employees also slacked off. Promotions became more and more about who you know than what you can do. More people started to abuse the systems however they could and the few merit based rewards had at least several people making use of abusing the system that way in order to claim that.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop outsourcing. Stop changing things on the customers so much so fast. Stop ignoring your customers. Stop ignoring your employees... happy well informed employees and customers do so much more for your company!
Employees were leaving before you closed the vancouver center even as many of them could see the end coming and that end isn't just of the center it's of eBay as a whole. You're losing customers, the best bet for the stockholders would be to get rid of John and find someone more like meg to take the lead or see if they could convince Pierre to put the pieces of eBay back together.

Pros

- innovative business model
- forefront of internet commerce
- interesting company to work for
- fast paced, dynamic
- exciting to be competing with the big boys in Silicon Valley
- international brand
- fortune 500 company
- still believing that people are basically good
- still helping some small business to earn a better living - especially amidst the economic meltdown
- enabling international commerce
- giving opportunities for people who cannot work otherwise a chance to use their innovation to make a living e.g. handicapped, elderly
- promoting social and economical equality
- can observe business model
- some good structures in place: HR, security, grassroots mentorship program, green initiatives, Rewards and Recognition team, facilities team - employee lounge
- good benefits: health, parking, transit benefits, shuttle to the skytrain, Bagel Day, ESPP, Group RRSP, RSUs, bonuses (use to), free gym, sabbatical program after 5 years

Cons

- lower salary
- lack of development opportunities to move talented individuals into the next position / salary category
- as a result, difficult to retain talent; barely holding on to people due to under water stock options
- career path from the Operations centre does not link into the Business Unit in San Jose / other countries

Advice to Senior Management

- give less business jargon
- provide more transparency
- it's okay to admit that things aren't rosy
- don't force people to think that the Vancouver climate is all happy-go-lucky
- being optimistic and simply not realistic are two different things
- to allow for true honesty, allow for more anonymous feedback that does not have leading questions that allow for genuine transparency (without recourse)