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.'"

Sorry, this is eBay's fault.

[mysidia]

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!

Stopped using Ebay for selling/buying back in 2003

[Super Dave Osbourne]

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.

Re:bad plan

[schon]

ONe of the worst things that you can do as a company is blame the user/customer.

Really? It seems to work quite well for Microsoft. :)

More business for Craigslist!!!

[Antique Geekmeister]

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.

Same story here...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Lack of standards.

[indiechild]

Most of the time, form and function can co-exist very well. It's just that eBay's developers are too lazy/incompetent to do it right, like the majority of web designers/developers.

It never ceases to amaze me how many "professional" web developers can't even write a basic HTML and CSS page without a dozen+ errors and sheer semantic idiocy (like using tables for layout).

Re:Lack of standards.

[zippthorne]

Both of those machines filled their respective niches admirably.

The DC-10, by being an incredibly robust and versatile airframe (Mid-air re-fuelers are typically DC-10s, as well as the microgravity laboratory aircraft (a.k.a. vomit comet)). The pinto by being an affordable, safe, relatively fuel-efficient automobile.

  I fail to see what the point of that was.

Re:bad plan

[Shikaku]

WGA and piracy

Re:Lack of standards.

[commodore64_love]

>>>Because [1970s] Open Standards were harsh. Like the standards for an audio tape or even an audio CD.

You wrote a nice soliloquy but it's based on a false premise. The examples you list were Not standards. Audio tapes and CDs were *proprietary* formats owned by Philips and Sony/Philips respectively. And in the 1970s there was a giant war between 8-track and compact cassette. Also Betamax and VHS. Also 3" versus 3.2" versus 3.5" floppies.

You are seeing in the golden haze of nostalgia a time period when "everything just worked" but that never existed. Format wars and differing formats have always been a problem. (Yes even the inventor of the phonograph Edison had to deal with rival formats.)

Re:Lack of standards.

[commodore64_love]

Yep:

- Floppies ranged in size from 8 inch to 5 inch to 3.5 inch to 3 inch
- Computers were available from Atari, Apple, Commodore, Texas Instruments and not compatible with one another
- Movies might be sold on videotape, or videorecord, or laserdisc, or film
- Music might be sold on records, or 45s, or 78s, or compact cassettes, or 8-tracks
- Game systems were Odyssey, Atari,Intellivision, Magnavox
- VCRs could be either VHS or Betamax or Umatic

Any view that the 70s were somehow free of format problems is merely nostalgia. There were plenty of of problems with formats.

Re:Always the same story

[mikeplokta]

PayPal most certainly is a bank. In Europe. If you want entities that hold your money to be regulated as banks in the US as well, then tell your Congressman, not Slashdot.

Re:Sorry, this is eBay's fault.

[Johann Lau]

you are so utterly wrong. what you posted just specifies that the page expires at that date, it doesn't say anything about any linked elements. those send their own HTTP headers. speaking of that: never use META tags when you can send HTTP headers instead, and please just use "0" instead of making up dates in the past.

Re:Lack of standards.

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

> Sell/Buy on craigslist.

Of which eBay is a 25% shareholder. Not really punishing them much, is it?

Re:Lack of standards.

[QuoteMstr]

Just use the classic mode for everything --- discussions, comments, and so on --- and spare yourself the worst of it. Just change your settings [slashdot.org]. (And while you're at it, nuke Idle from orbit, just to be sure.)

Re:Lack of standards.

[Tynam]

Support a better rival, like eBid. On the internet, big monopolies with huge name recognition advantage can be ousted by upstart competitors, if they're sufficiently better to use. It's just difficult. Look what happened to yahoo.

Re:Lack of standards.

[MartinSchou]

The pinto by being an affordable, safe, relatively fuel-efficient automobile.

From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]

The safety record of the Ford Pinto has become a landmark narrative on the evils of amoral companies putting profit ahead of customer safety. The articles and news stories about the Pinto released at the time generally portray the car as more prone to fire than other cars of the time. They also portray Ford as callous for knowingly and willfully ignoring safety concerns.
[...]
Through early production of the model, it became a focus of a major scandal when it was alleged that the car's design allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in the event of a rear-end collision which sometimes resulted in deadly fires and explosions. Critics argued that the vehicle's lack of a true rear bumper as well as any reinforcing structure between the rear panel and the tank, meant that in certain collisions, the tank would be thrust forward into the differential, which had a number of protruding bolts that could puncture the tank. This, and the fact that the doors could potentially jam during an accident (due to poor reinforcing) allegedly made the car less safe than its contemporaries.

Ford allegedly was aware of this design flaw but refused to pay what was characterized as the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. Mother Jones magazine obtained the cost-benefit analysis that it said Ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 ($56 today, allowing for inflation) repair against the monetary value of a human life, in what became known as the Ford Pinto memo.[6][7][8] The characterization of Ford's design decision as gross disregard for human lives in favor of profits led to significant lawsuits. While Ford was acquitted of criminal charges, it lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing "the barbecue that seats four."[9] Nevertheless, as a result of this identified problem, Ford initiated a callback which provided a dealer installable "safety kit" that installed some plastic protective material over the offending sharp objects, negating the risk of tank puncture."[10]

I'm not an expert on cars, car safety, car history, nor was the car in question ever sold in Denmark, yet I still know that using the Pino as an example of a "safe" car is rather silly.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:This doesn't surprise me at all...

[ThrowAwaySociety]

Storing sessions in memory cached in a single server, with a router to get you to the right server, backed by a clustered database seems like a good solution

No, it doesn't. It sounds like a mediocre solution.

The proper solution is to replicate sessions across servers [ibm.com].

Re:Lack of standards.

[zippthorne]

I say it was safe, because the actual incidence of fire-related fatalities resulting from rear-end collision (the failure mode which supposedly was completely ignored by ford in their cost-benefit analysis), turned out to be lower than other cars in its class. The risk was overblown, and ford was correct, in hindsight.

It is a very good example though of getting people worked up over FUD and giving a car company an undeservedly bad reputation. Every car company always weighs the costs of additional measures against the "value" of the lives saved. If they didn't, we'd all drive tanks, and there wouldn't be roads, only railways, and they'd have a built in governor limiting you to 5mph anyway. Oh, and only the five richest people in the country could afford one.