eBay, the world’s largest
e-commerce marketplace with 88 million active users, announced plans to
consolidate its North America customer service facilities. The action is
expected to capture efficiencies, expand support to customers and facilitate
the delivery of new service programs focused on improving the eBay customer
experience.

The consolidation will result in the closure of eBay’s Vancouver, Canada
facility. The Vancouver facility, which employs approximately 700 customer
service agents, is expected to close by Sept. 30, 2009. It is eBay’s intent to
increase the number of employees at its Salt Lake City facility, which
currently employs more than 900 customer service agents, and at certain other
facilities globally.

“We are working aggressively to deliver a better customer experience for
eBay buyers and sellers,” said Chad O’Meara, vice president, Customer Service,
eBay Marketplaces. “While it is a difficult decision to close our Vancouver
facility, we believe that consolidating our North America customer service
operations will help accelerate our efforts to continually exceed buyer and
seller expectations.”

The company expects to maintain current support levels and does not
anticipate any disruption to service as a result of this change. eBay’s
customer support operations within its payments and communications businesses,
PayPal and Skype, will not be impacted.

eBay Marketplaces is focused on strengthening customer service provided
to sellers and buyers. The consolidation of service centers will enable eBay
to improve first-contact resolution for all U.S. customer service needs,
strengthen top seller account management and expand recently introduced phone
support.