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eBay Denies New Design Is Broken, Blames Users
krick-zero writes "eBay recently rolled out a new page design. Many eBay sellers are reporting issues with missing description text, resulting in lost sales. Buyers are reporting the same intermittent issue, on multiple platforms, with multiple browsers. After complaining to eBay customer service, one user got this response: 'I have reviewed several of your listings using my computer and had several of my coworkers view your listings as well and we are seeing the complete listings. Many times when buyers are not able to see the whole description or just bits and pieces it is due to browser issues they are having. A lot of times if they simply clear out their cache and cookies or change browsers (i.e. change from Internet explorer to Firefox or vice versa) they no longer have this problem.'"
broken by design
God ferbid they spend a dime on honest to goodness black box QA testing on all platforms and browsers.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It seems to have a lot to do with the way they name their Javascripts and stuff. But once I clear cache and cookies, it goes away for a few weeks or a few months. That's probably when MS changes things again. This doesn't happen on most sites... seems most that it happens on ones that are, I am guessing, breaking some sort of rule.
I've had similar problems and it always comes back to the javascript they are using. If I change the way the JS is allowed via AdBlock or NoScript, things start working... if I keep it at my normal settings, the descriptions disappear.
There was a short period of time when companies actually made sure their products were usable by people.
That was in 1970s.
Electronics then were not complicated, but sophisticated enough. And Walkmans would actually work.
Because Open Standards were harsh.
Like the standards for an audio tape or even an audio CD.
They were expected to work with ANY player as long as it met the standards.
That is why i could take a take from my boom box, plug into a walkman and listen on way to school and back.
Or how LP records worked.
Standards governed and restricted how companies could use "innovation" to screw up their own products.
The rot started with Sound Blaster.
It was an Industry standard as opposed to open standard.
Browsers? There is no standard today.
Once you take away a standard that sets minimum expectations, then obviously things don't work.
Blaming eBay is easy. Blaming lack of standards and blaming all is hard.
WHom should we blame? Microsoft for their UTTER lack of interest in adopting open standards?
IBM for its insistence on peeing into the wind?
Netscape for its collosal stupidity in failing to set standards?
eBay for not knowing what a standard is and breaking things up?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Expecting users to switch browsers or clear cache to see page text is absurd.
If users can't see description text, they have a bug in their application.
By the way. I'm not at all pleased with the new eBay design.
They think they're being all fancy, cute, and Web 2.0-like i'm sure.
And in the process... forgetting about the quality of the user experience and ease of use (which includes not having to switch browsers, clear cache, cookies, re-login, and other voodoo "self help" techniques), which basically are hallmarks of a low-quality, poorly done, poorly tested web site.
And straight up, that sucks, and shows unprofessional behavior on eBay's part IMO.
It's not the least bit hard to hire and train CSRs who won't blame the user for everything, and who'll actually help determine what's going wrong, and get the user in touch with someone to report the bugs....
Blame the user, or their choice of browser is the absolute worst thing they could possibly do. In a decade when standards-based is the norm, and REAL web-sites are tested and qualified with the major browsers, including IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc, and any malfunction of the site is the site's problem, not just the complaining users' problem!
ONe of the worst things that you can do as a company is blame the user/customer... that is unless their plan is to assume that their users are idiots and therefore wouldn't go elsewhere or they haven't thought this out at all.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Sold from 1999 to 2003, and got fed up with eBay and their ignoring feedback from users. Now they seem to have taken it seriously and still screwed up yet another revision (5 years plus in the making). Go eBay, e-i-e-i-o.
I thought that it was just me. I have been worried that I had a bit of spyware or something, pages are just not acting right, but only in ebay.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Interesting how in the before/after diagram, they zoomed out the old item page to make it look less clear. Also, they chose a crappier picture (and an entirely different product).
This is the kind of sloppiness/deviousness I expect fat-burning pill advertisements, not a big corporation like eBay. They should have shown the same product at the same resolution so people could objectively see the differences.
Excessive use of fragile and unreliable, non-standards-compliant Javascript? Check.
Excessive use of meaningless graphics, slowing browsing and usability but reducing the number of successful page changes by clients? Check.
Obvious uselessness for those with visual problems? Check.
Unnecessary re-arrangement of straightforward design to force a "new paradigm" as part of some advertising exec's "new vision"? Check.
No improvement in user experience or actual usable features added? Check.
Disable current generation of sniping tools, forcing them to hire engineers for at least 30 minutes work to update their clients? Check.
Driving people to the plain-text, plain-language, you can even rent cheap hookers there traffic of Craigslist? Check.
"No shit, Sherlock", but eBay's cure was worse than the disease.
With the "new hotness", I now have pictures that obscure the auction listings when I'm scrolling through items because Javashit thinks I'm hovering over the image (bad! stop doing that! I didn't ask you to do that!). If I find an item of interest and want to look at the pictures, I get a pop-up window (WTF?) with a slide-show-like sidebar (worse!), and since the whole shebang requires Javashit to display anything, and that very same script denies the ability to right-click-saveAs the image, it's now considerably more difficult to actually compare the image of a product with a reference image.
For that matter, it's now practically impossible to compare two images of the same item with each other. When eBay used URLs that pointed to .JPGs, you could middle-click them to pop the image open in a new tab for viewing or saving. With the "new hotness", you're middle-clicking javascript:void(), and nothing happens.
None of which addresses the root cause of the problem: 99% of the time, it's a crappy cell phone picture taken at 640x480, or generic clipart from the item's manufacturer, where you're lucky if it's 320x200. That's not eBay's fault, that's the sellers' fault.
If you want to solve the problems with images, stop hiding them behind Javascript-reliant slide-shows. Less Web 2.0 crap, more usability testing. Fucking web designers. It's no longer an auction listing site, it's a web technology demo. Hey, web designers, maybe if you stopped this continual race of trying to keep your resumes well-padded and buzzword-compliant at the expense of end-user usability, your customers might not leave you in bewilderment and disgust, and you might not need to hand your resumes out as often.
So when can we meet up? Wait, are you cute?
or else!
Javascript causes a new interface to act up, be unreliable and unpredictable on all browsers across all platforms? Now where have I heard that before?
;)
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Sounds like the ebay customer service rep has met the requirements of the prestigious Works on my machine certification program.
Their new layout has a 100% feedback and hundreds of people have it as "A++++++++++++++!!!"
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
I went to a presentation a few years ago by a pair of eBay's senior engineers where they were discussing their architecture and technology. They explained their Java-on-Windows two-tier architecture (web front-ends which are handling all of the business logic, database backends, little-to-no caching, etc). They explained how they have pools of servers for handling different page types (i.e. search vs. gateway vs. help, etc) and how they sometimes have brownouts in some pools because they mis-predicted the number of servers they needed in that pool.
During the Q&A, somebody asked them, "what's the biggest challenge that you guys face?"; the response was "fitting enough information in the browser's cookie... 4k really isn't enough information for us". A follow-up question was asked about why they didn't just use a session-id key and store as much data as they want in a database or cache, etc. They basically admitted that they didn't have the technical strength to build something like that at their scale.
I asked them why they allow users to post JavaScript in their posts as it basically turns all of eBay into a cross-site scripting bug. I know for a fact that sellers have been able to include JS in their posts which can record the max-bid of the buyer. Sure, it's against the TOS, but only if they catch it. Their response was that it's what their customers (read sellers) want.
The point I'm getting to is that eBay, despite having one of the most popular websites in the world employs some bass-ackward technical solutions and business policies. What's reported in this doesn't surprise me at all.
GET OFF MY LAWN!
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
I guess my thought is, it really doesn't matter if it's the user's fault or not.
If you're a company selling something - a product or service - it's up to you to make it simple to use for the people that are trying to use it (or at least, the people in your target market that are trying to use it), or lose their business. It doesn't really matter if they're doing it wrong. If they come to your site with the same browser and system they have always used and suddenly it doesn't work, well then the fact that it's the browser that's implementing something wrong doesn't matter to them because the site worked well before. Maybe it is. Maybe there's a minor thing the site implements wrong.
I look at this and feel like this is simply a classic case where you have a team of developers that are doing the website at eBay, or any major corporation, and they like having jobs. So at some moment in time there is a necessary site redesign, and they spend months, perhaps years, working on it. Then the site goes live, they spend the next few months to work out the bugs, and there's the question "OK, so, what do we do now?"
So the obvious question is "We start work on the NEXT-NEXT generation website! We'll start on it right away!" And this cycles over and over, because if you say to management "You know what? The website we have is pretty damn good, functional, and we've worked most of the bugs out - there's no need to upgrade", the next thing to say is "So we don't need a gigantic web development team, right?"
This is the only reason I can think of for some of the upgrades I've seen at major websites the past year or so - websites that were previously functional, easy to use, fast, etc. and are now buggy, overladen with crap, etc.
Users don't want explanations. They want solutions. A fact that I'm sure most developers are painfully aware of.
Even if the problem is at their end, they still want it to work the way it did before. Even if Ebay is justified in their response, they still need to try and do something about it if they want to keep their users happy.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
Blame the user!
Maybe the design is NOT broken. I use ebay weekly and have done so for almost a decade and can't remember one interface problem. I do however have a problem with Ebay pricing, but that's another slashdot for another day...
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I must have missed the announcement... Oh - and for all those who will respond by making snide remarks about SL and those of us who attempt to utilize it....bite me.
Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because we actually dese
CraigsList does it right. Very simple interface, and displays fast and reliably.
Shame even Slashdot doesn't. I'm using classic index, and that's greatly helped, but still see little "x"s, such as next to most every menu item on the right hand side - on my browser, for example, "Prefs" is followed by a space and "x".
I don't understand what all the Javascript and other extra nonsense in most sites (some noteable exceptions are interactive apps, such as Google Maps, which works amazingly well) is needed for other than glitz; being web 2.0, whatever that means - to me it means, more often than not, broken!
Ron
I just went to eBay and it looks and works the same as it always has.
The comments given by one rep in customer service doesn't really equate to eBay as a company blaming users. Clearing cache and cookies is pretty much an eBay rep's cookie cutter response for any such problems, and if that doesn't work they try other things. Or it could be the rep was just bad, didn't get a memo, or that they hadn't filed a bug yet.
Trust me, I'm no fan of eBay, but I don't think it's valid to say the company is blaming users for the description errors based on that one rep's comment alone.
There are a number of posts in this discussion saying what you said, but I can't say I agree. I remember the old Slashdot, and the new Slashdot is a big improvement. I've never had a problem loading the site or having it work incorrectly, although years ago I had longstanding problems with Slashdot. Also, I like the new eBay layout better than the old one. It's nice. Moreover, I generally like the new wave of advanced website interfaces, which I find much more compelling than plain HTML pages.
That's just my two cents. I have no criticism of your opinion.
that way if you write broken javascript, at least users will know
Perhaps Ebay can become the new standard! Forget Acid3, if you can view Ebay, your browser is how it should be.
Posting AC to protect the innocent...
A few years ago my company's software (Windows/.NET-based) was in use by eBay for some functionality. They had some dedicated Windows boxes set up to run it. One time they had a problem with it, and getting even basic diagnostic information out them was impossible (even though they were escalating it as some big emergency).
The relationship ended after they decided they wanted to re-architect things and move our stuff closer to their back end. I was on the conference call when we had to explain to them that our .NET code wasn't going to run on their IBM AIX-based servers.
Cute is in the eye of the beholder. Behold, and judge for yourself. You should be warned, he's been hitting on her too. Getting between them could be hazardous to your health.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It took them FIVE YEARS to design this "new" interface? It still looks worse than craigslist. I think Ebay would best be off licencing the data, and then providing the backend for ebay, and letting third party users plug into their database/backend and provide their own 3rd party front end "officially licenced by ebay". Look how well this works for the National Weather Service. You've got weather.com, weatherunderground, other sites like stormpulse and various other ones, all providing specific things the others don't offer, and in tight, clean packages.
moox. for a new generation.
I used to be able to use Firefox. Then, only IE would work. That is when I quit using eBay. Who cares what they do anymore. Fuck 'em.
I complained to them about a year ago before the new design because you couldn't see stuff if your screen resolution was not high enough. They blew me off in a round-about way. Thus, this is not new.
I wish these websites would have a KISS Mode, where all the browser-busting eye-candy could be turned optionally off. And no, I don't mean these guys.
Table-ized A.I.
You're both right. The new slashdot is faster to use and ostensibly more usable. However, it's also horrendously slow and bloated and breaks at times.
.
For those wishing to file a Class Action against eBay/PayPal:
http://www.43things.com/things/view/193389/file-a-class-action-lawsuit-against-ebay-and-paypal
http://www.screw-paypal.com/paypal_lawsuits.html
By far the best part of Slashdot 2.0 is that you can open up replies inline instead of having to jump to a new page (possibly in a new tab). Everything else is mostly a wash, although I hate how they've forced a specific font on the comments and front page. There's a reason I set Bitstream Vera Sans as the default font and the font to use for all the font families...
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
ie 6 at work. text floats randomly in comments. current firefox at home. Start dragging the task bar down and all of the sudden poof, i'm 200 pages further down in the comments. Yup, craigslist has the right idea.
Years ago, I had an ebay account with two negative feedbacks. Instead of trying to get them removed, I just opened a new accout. My new account was in excellent standing for more than 3 year and I was a platinum power seller. I was given an ebay account manager along with a paypal manager because of the monthly volume I was selling. One day, my platinum power seller account was closed and I called to see why. My manager said that my powerseller account had been linked to my first account, which was not in good standing and was closed by ebay. It takes ebay 3 years to link accounts? I've had the same address and IP address for the past 15 years. I asked what I had to do in order to reopen my powerseller account and I was told by my ebay manager, that I had to resolve the 2 negative feedbacks on my original account (which was more than 4 years old by this point). I managed to log into my original account with my managers help (because I no longer used that email address associated w/the original account). Once I logged into my original account, I emailed both buyers and asked if they would be willing to remove their negative feedbacks. Both customers agreed. Both customers left negative feedback because they felt as though they overpaid. I offered to give them $100 each to make things right. I called my ebay manager back and told him both buyers would remove their negative feedbacks, which he told me, would put my original account back in good standing, which would re-open my powerseller account. The following day, my ebay manager called me and said too much time had passed for me to resolve these feedbacks and ebay would not allow my customers to remove them. I appealed this all the way up to the office of the president and got nowhere. I will join any class action lawsuit out there in an effort to get reinstated on ebay. My customers always recd their merchandise. I paid over 5k per month just in ebay listing/selling fees. That should tell you the volume I was doing. This doesnâ(TM)t include the fees I paid each month to paypal, which of course, Iâ(TM)m banned from them to.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGG!!!!!
WHAT HAS BEEN SEEN CAN NEVER BE UNSEEN!
YOU BASTARD!
Filter error: Of course I'm yelling Mr. Filter, did you even READ the post I'm replying to. Jeethuth Chritht!
Correct me if I am wrong but the National Weather Service isn't In Business for Money.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Since the earliest days of Ebay they have addressed every problem in exactly the same way --- deny deny deny.
Sorry Slashdot, but eBay utterly refuses to upgrade their web browsers. The reason stuff breaks and they don't notice it, is because their browsers aren't NEW, and employees can not install upgrades themselves. eBay staff CAN NOT help you.
Someone probably already tried this, but here goes anyway:
Allow people to put things they own up for sale permanently. This way people list and forget then a few weeks down the road, they sell some stuff. The biggest barrier to competing with ebay is getting a significant amount of junk people may want to look through. Allowing everyone to basically have their own storefront means you collect enough junk over a few years that people start coming to your site regularly.
You also have to do the standard auction thing, but that isn't the selling point.
God spoke to me.
I have been an Ebay user for a long time and their user interface has improved with each update, but I always wondered when the relentless push for feature cramming would go too far. Well, they have finally tipped beyond diminishing returns and are actually moving backward. Nice run though- gotta give 'em credit.
that even with this trickeration, the old design is objectively better. Less clutter, less ambiguity. The new design has box after box after box, with labels like "Make it yours." WTF? What's the matter with "Bid" or "Buy?" What's the problem with one photo of a product, one box in which to place your bid? It's not Facebook, it's ecommerce!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I have been finding it harder and harder to avoid being thrown willy-nilly into the new Slashdot beta interface. For a while I was getting half-beta half-vanilla, until I complained on another forum and it got to a slashdot developer that way.
Now I'm finding that links to articles from comment pages take you to a different URL which always shows a "rich" interface whether you have it enabled or not.
Slashdot... dump the beta, and drop the fancy user interface. You're better off without it.
Power Sellers have dropped by the thousands, including myself...
I'm OK with that. "Power Sellers" bury individual "real people" sellers with their flood, no, tsunami of Chinese crap drop shipped from the same distributers... A lot of the same shrink wrapped crap-ola found in discount malls, flea markets, state fairs... Wal-Mart - you get the idea, not real auctions, mostly "Buy It Now" crap. In other words, all the stuff that makes eBay worthless and hard to find the real stuff.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
In many organizations the size of eBay, the front line support staff has more of a chance of having the pope over for dinner than they have getting specs for their company's software changed to incorporate user feedback. All they can do is accept the software, broken-as-designed and all, and help users work around or cope with the brokenness.
You must be new here
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/27/0216251
moox. for a new generation.
Ah right.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I gave up when they intentionally broke my brower's Back button. You have to use their tiny "Back to list" link to move back from an individual listing to your search results. To me, that's broken. When I reported it as a bug, I actually got a note from BOTH customer service and legal telling me that eBay was under no obligation to pay attention to my criticism. I'm not kidding.
That company is hosed. It has forgotten what made it successful, and is now like any other bureaucratic organization. Ruled by MBAs and project managers who only look good if they're constantly stirring the pot and adding ingredients.
I've never had a problem loading the site or having it work incorrectly,
Most of use don't have a problem getting slashdot to work incorrectly, it's true. However, having it work correctly would be more desirable.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Yeah, more business for craigslist! That'll show those ebay bastards.
... and this gives Ebay the ease to do whatever they want, including screw both buyer and sellers with terrible service, terrible support, and terrible implementations. I actually like the design layout. But to the extent the implementation fails to deliver, whether that is because of incompatible CSS, mishandled HTTP requests, or whatever ... well they can get away with cheapness on their end because ... you are absolutely right about nobody will leave Ebay.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
ebay is typical of a company losing market share. Blame everyone else.
I wrote a very specific letter to them describing how they could improve many things. I got a letter back which I've framed saying "they don't accept suggestions from outside ebay".
Brilliant! Bunch of geniuses. They must all have CO poisoning from car exhaust leaks. Maybe people leave cars running near ebay building air intakes.
One suggestion was that they upload their html to http://validator.w3.org/check before going live. Anyone ever look at the html? It's a nightmare.
I know this is slashdot and almost all of you LOVE your javascript, but you all know it's the single biggest security threat to 'net computing. I hope for the day that the US Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have strong technology divisions which would rule that sites like ebay may NOT use javascript or any other insecure technology, and that all webpages and data feeds are tested and approved by w3.org or some other standard setting entity.
Come on- can't a group of us start a competition to ebay? Someone come up with a good name- that's all you need. The code is trivial. Something closer to ebay, not cl. I'll do it- who's with me?
I have the same with Acronis at the moment. I found a rather fundamental bug in the restore function of True Image and I have been given the runaround by the support outfit they use (giveaway of outsourcing: the problem/bug isn't solved but they're trying to pressurise me into flagging it as "RESOLVED" on the sheer strength of them haven given me an -inadequate- answer).
In case you're wondering what, some idiot developer put a time-out on archive password validity (non-optional, cannot change the timeout period either). Guess what happens mid restore? Translated: if you ever decide on password protecting your backup you may find that partial restore isn't going to work. Quite a bug for a backup program, and disappointing for what is otherwise IMHO about the best backup product out there.
We'll see, I just fired a new bolt into that outfit. Let's see if they pay attention now.
We use petrol-based cars by habit, but in the UK when it last peaked at £1.20 it was noticable how people were driving less. If you applied eBay's price hikes to the petrol industry I believe you would see increasing demand for LPG/electric alternatives (even public transport if they can put up with the crowding).
A loyal customer base today is no guarantee for a loyal customer base tomorrow. They must remember to innovate well, you can go too far in the wrong direction: Delorean got it wrong with the car!
eBay is not a forum like slashdot (and if there ever was an example of bad code, /. is it) but an auction site. This means that for one thing, it has to rely on being up-to-date and handling requests in order. If you don't see my post for half an hour, who cares. If you don't see my bid until after the auction ended, well you might be pretty pissed off because I was going to bid way higher then the current offer.
As a webdeveloper myself, it is often pretty hard to imagine just how different an application needs to be, to suit a different need. There is a definite tendency for people to think "oh it is the web, I can do html, I do a web application". Nope. Even if you got experience with one type of webapp, don't presume you know how to another. Especially on a gigantic scale.
You start to run into all sorts of problems once you have to scale up, especially when you got to the point scaling don't work no more and you got to split things up.
Even simple things, like cross-domain scripting start to get in the way.
Lets give the ebay developers at least a little bit of credit, they might not do things perfectly but the site has run succesfully for years. So maybe, just maybe, they know what they are talking about when they say caching don't work for them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If looks like item descriptions now load in an iframe from ebaydesc.com, so this may break in browsers with any blocking of iframes or content from external domains. However, as I haven't used eBay in a while, I can't be sure if this is new or something they've done for a while in the old design too...
The problem with the inline expires header is that it only applies to elements loaded in the past.
So if something is already in the cache with a wrong expires header, there is no way to get it out of there except by clearing cache or maybe sending a new expires header when a HEAD command is being received.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
The National Weather Service also doesn't "officially license" ANY of those other sites. They provide raw weather information they collect, and other folks just download and interpret it. These other sites do not use NWS (weather.gov) as a backend except to get information from them, and if you look on these respective sites they will have the boilerplate "data provided by NWS" disclaimer that anyone who uses that data is required to display. That disclaimer is a long step from any sort of official licensing or endorsement, however. I could go write a weather site right now (and have done so in the past) and use that data legally just by displaying the "NWS wuz here" message, without even telling them I'm doing it.
Shameful for such a large company. I thought the profession had gotten beyond "Your browser ate our homework."
I'm really disappointed with this new re-design of eBay, it doesn't look real different but it isn't any better designed. I also dislike the text disappearing issues and poor Javascript.
They need to listen to the user feedback and either allow a choice between the old and new design or completely re-do it sometime in the near future. Makes no sense to keep a design most users don't like. Is it gonna stop people from using their site? At this point it doesn't look like it, since eBay is one of the largest auction sites. Some people may leave to find a better auction site. I doubt eBay is going to change the design or even allow a choice. It might be smart to listen to older members voicing their distaste, if not, they're just another big company who only cares to raise their market shares and so forth.
The next time a web designer tells me to clear my cache and cookies, I swear I'm going to slap him upside the head. There is no bloody reason to EVER make a user do this!
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1330187&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=29140923#29141475
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1330187&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=29140923#29141475
I've had trouble with their rendering even before the change, using various versions of Opera.
Before the layout change, the shipping info/bottom bid field was supposed to be immediately below the item description. However, about 80% of the time, there would be 3-4 pages of blank space between the end of the item description and the shipping info. About 10% of the time, there wouldn't be that white space... but there would be what looked like a 2 column table, with the shipping info NEXT TO the item description.
After the layout change, it generally works, but there is still the white space, EVERY time now.
Although I did see the blank description problem the other day on Opera Mobile 9.5... (Yes, I know, eBay has a mobile site. It's also horribly crippled.)
"I have reviewed several of your listings using my computer and had several of my coworkers view your listings as well and we are seeing the complete listings."
TRANSLATION: We have no intention of correcting this problem. My fellow cubicle rats and I are ignoring your problem be cause we just don't feel like taking the time to solve it. We think that you will believe whatever excuse we give you. Not that you have a choice anyway.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The typical problem of using a browser that is not conforming to the standards established and documented. (IE is not a standards compliant browser). The typical defense is that the problem, no matter how rife in the users area, is not the companies fault.
The company owes its allegiance to its microsoft dependent crew. The business owes its existence to the users. Losing site of part 2, solves part one. The fewer users, the less money, the less money the less need for narrow sited and limited skilled programmers...or other employees. This is not the economy for that attitude..
It's a few percent loss to eBay, an 80-90% loss to the seller.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
This is not a technology problem. This is a business problem. If you are running a shopfront, online or offline, in a competitive marketplace, you need to make it as accessible as possible to all the customers you want. For eBay, that is "everyone" (for a hot-dog stand, it is also "everyone"; for a Rolex dealer, it's only people who can afford a Rolex). The higher you make the barrier to entry, the fewer customers you will have.
Now if you're a person wanting a partner to sell your stuff with, do you want the stupid partner, or the smart one?
If you're a customer wanting to buy, do you use the easy website that works, or the one that doesn't work right? What incentive is there for you to use the hard-to-use site?
eBay thinks they have incentives (product range, large base of existing users, etc) to overcome these things. They may be right. They could be wrong. It's their business choice to make it work less well for some people. If they are unable to make it both work better for some people and well enough for others, they may have a serious business problem; if they choose to make it better for some people and worse for others, that's a courageous business choice. If it makes them, or their sellers, less money, it's stupid.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1330187&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=29140923#29141475
Weird, was still seeing item descriptions (even after this had hit Slashdot), now I'm not.
I don't much mind the new UI much in and of itself. However, I like the old one, though only a bit better.
The big problem is the squeezing policies...
I sell lots of Magic the Gathering trading cards online, including eBay. I stopped using eBay for this after Morningtide (the February 2008 expansion) because of the fee increase that would have applied to the next batch of sales.
I'm back now; I'm getting prices high enough that it looks like I still have a decent margin after the fees.
Mandatory PayPal? Even before that change, most of my eBay customers used it anyway. I and/or my customers often find it worth using for my non-eBay dealings too.
The eBay fees themselves are high, yes, but for large-value items, the percentage take isn't proportionally as much. First 5 auction-style listings per month have a slightly different fee structure; I manage to work that math out of course.)
What I'm worried about is the ancillary policy changing - the stuff with the straightforward financial numbers is annoying, but is straightforward to address.
I mean the feedback BS and all the other buyer-centric stuff in particular. (News flash: Online fraud isn't limited to the seller side; I haven't been hit hard as a seller, but I've had some scrapes)
I buy stuff on eBay too, and have gotten $ back from PayPal when I needed it, even though it took a couple weeks. Don't depend on eBay, just use it as one of several sources I check when shopping around.
Heck, that's the nature of monopoly - they can get away with these imperfections, some serious, precisely because of their market power - despite the problems, it still makes sense to deal with them, at least in the short term. In that sense, "ZOMG! They're evil! Boycott!" has some trouble appealing to my rationalist inner economist. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Better, put your money into having a rich text editor that works like stackoverflow's
No, please, no, those things are huge, nasty, bloated, and unnecessary.
Just how many times does eBay have you show you the utter contempt they have for their customers before you get the message? I'll never visit eBay ever again and that thought makes me happy everytime. Come on folks, move on already, nothing to see at eBay that you can't see at 10 other places. You don't have to line up again for another slap in the face, you're better than that. You deserve better than that.
First off a lot of negative things have been said about paypal, and it is unlikely they got such a bad rep being fair and impartial. Secondly,we all have been around long enough now that we should recognize when we ae being handed a line of bull by a tech support rep. Now clearing the cache is a reasonable thing and that in and of itself is not a bad sign, but if they dismiss complaints after giving that advice, they are being short-sighted. It is in eBay's interest to pay attention to what people are saying about their experiences with the new software. The user's are eBay's unpaid beta testers and are very likely observing important behavior. Back when I wrote code and people observed things, I said thank you because I wanted to find bugs. The attitude that they do not exist does not help one's observational skills. Also it is not good enough for them to assume that users with the latest Microsoft browser are the only ones needing support. You would think they have the money and staff to get this sort of thing right for the entire class of users.
are adopting the (blame the) customer-first policy.
Ebay broke the "Watch this item" feature on their auction pages a few weeks back. It appeared to affect Firefox and not IE. The Ebay developers' first response was the same as this situation - "It works for me". That's terrible customer relations and reflects even poorer developer experience. Did Ebay lay off a bunch of their seasoned developers and trade in for high schoolers?
http://dev-forums.ebay.com/thread.jspa?threadID=600000891&anticache=1252934096581
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware
Yeah, I'm sure it was spyware. *Snicker*
I am not devoid of humor.
The hammer experience is much richer and warmer when you use a gold-plated one.
no
The problem of the ebay page is simply caused by the "Referrer" information in the HTTP requests of the browser.
The "HTTP Referrer" contains the URL of the page from which the current request is coming from. So for example when you go from page "A" to page "B" in your browser, the server of "B" will get the URL of the page "A" via HTTP Referrer. And because there are lots of badly programmed web pages out there where the login information is directly or indirectly (for example as "Session ID") encoded in the page URL, this sensitive data can be exposed to foreign servers through the Referrer and therefore the Referrer can be a serious privacy and security issue. And because of this many firewalls and browser filters/adblockers do filter out or block the Referrer, at least when multiple domains are involved.
And this is the problem: ebay uses different domains for its resources (ebay.com, ebaydesc.com and maybe some more). And ebay expects that the Referrer is always present when loading certain resources (like certain external javascript files). If the Referrer is missing, only the stripped down article description remains and the rest of the page vanishes. This is what the ebay page is programmed to do (it's stupid, I know, but this is what is happening).
Also when reading the HTTP specification, you'll learn that the HTTP Referrer is an optional parameter and a HTTP request with a missing Referrer is perfectly valid. So the ebay site which falls apart when the Referrer is missing is definitely broken by design.
So if you have problems with the ebay site, and if you can control the Referrer, make sure the Referrer is always sent. Of course you're out of luck if you can't change the Firewall settings of your Office or Company and it is filtering the Referrer.
Ebay hires mongoloids - tards with a trisomic set of 21st chromosomes, to do their web design and programming. It is cheaper for them because they receive government assistance to do so. As long as ther is an extra 21st chromosome in the ebay picture, the site will behave like it. Too bad. Ebay USED TO have a decent site.