Flashes of Panic

Someone with a lot of web experience and good venture backing needs to go in and steal eBay’s business.

I suppose I shouldn’t be saying this, since eBay’s founder is an alumnus of the University and has donated a big chunk of change over the last few years. But I spent an hour last night trying to post a simple item listing—with 45 minutes of that spent in a chat window with a customer service rep who never asked what browser I was using and spent most of the time trying to solve a problem which was, to me, secondary (and unnecessary) to the issue I was really having, to wit, the form validation was broken.

Let’s leave aside, just for a moment, the issue of eBay’s own design and layout. Let’s just think about the usability of the forms. If Web 2.0 has taught us anything, it’s that it’s possible to write easy to use forms which require the user to jump through a minimum of hoops to get things done. Also, we’ve learned that not all the internet is using IE 6.0 on Windows. So why am I facing a pseudo-Ajax form which insists that I need to enable PayPal for this listing when (a) it looks to me like PayPal is already enabled, and (b) if I assume it isn’t, there’s no clear way to enable it. (There’s no unclear way, either.)

And why am I faced with customer service which asks me to flush my cache and delete all my cookies before they consider that I may be on a Mac, and may be using Firefox? (Once they learned I was on a Mac, they actually suggested I try Safari instead, which was both amusing and horrifying—is eBay so much of a nightmare for Firefox on Windows as well that Safari does a better job?) I flushed the cache (can’t hurt much) but only deleted eBay and Paypal cookies—I’m not sure they trusted me to do that properly, but I don’t want to lose logged-in sessions on a lot of other sites just because eBay is broken.

So why can’t someone do this better? Well, there are significant barriers to entry, and one of them is brand recognition. Another is the massive ecosystem of small businesses living like barnacles on the eBay ship; how do you recreate them and all the business they send through the parent?

But oh, there must be an easier way to do this. (The same goes for buying airline tickets, while I’m at it.)

Update, 1/11: While I’m at it, can’t I get a feed of items I’m watching? How about items I’m selling? Why should I be bound to the My eBay page? How about better permalinks for auction items? Friendlier URLs, perhaps ones which don’t expose the underlying technology (what if eBay switched to Rails from the DLLs they’re using now? How about if they switch from Rails to something else? Do they break all the URLs?)

Now Playing: She’s So High from Leisure by Blur

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